Half The Secret Given, Half The Secret Stolen
by treeflamingo
Summary: Ren gave her half of his secret, but she found the other half herself.  Starts immediately after the events of chap 166, kind of AU at this point.  COMPLETE.
1. Half The Secret Given

**Hey guys! I totally should have spent the end of November trying to salvage my NaNo project, or at least working on that songfic challenge I am woefully remiss about updating, but this conniving little plot bunny just wouldn't leave me alone. It takes place immediately after the events of Chap 166 and will probably be rendered irrelevant by Chap 167, but hey. A writer's gotta do what the plot bunnies say, right? Aside from epic spoilers, there are no warnings, and genre can be thought of as Gen in that it pingpongballs around a number of genres in (as closely as I can imitate) the manner of the manga. Please note that I swap POVs between chapters - it's a writing-exercise-turned-hobby of mine, please don't let it confuse you. And of course, R&R is like giving shiny presents directly to my soul! ^_^**

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**Half The Secret Given**

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about, Mogami-san." Tsuruga Ren held a glass of scotch atop his left knee and observed with well-affected amusement the rigid form of his kohai kneeling before him on his living room rug.

Mogami Kyoko was dressed in street clothes – a shortish skirt (more high-school-girl-with-exceptionally-nice-legs than, say, Setsuka Heel) and a modest, high-cut sweater. Tokyo winters were cold and Kyoko had taken to wearing tall socks under her customary pair of boots. For this reason Ren was secretly extremely glad that she was kneeling with her legs tucked firmly under and her hands clasped formally in her lap; the sight of her in a school-length skirt and knee socks attracted him far more than he was comfortable with.

Kyoko's frigid glare kept Ren from thinking too long on her inadvertent charm. If he didn't appease her quickly he may have to start chipping ice off himself. He tried a warm smile.

"Honestly, Mogami-san. It was just the shock of the accident. I've never been in an accident before. I'm fine now." She had shown up at his door about 15 minutes after he'd arrived home himself (barely 10 minutes after he'd poured his first drink, only 5 after he'd poured his second), demanding to know what was wrong. There were plenty of things wrong, and Ren had a pretty solid guess as to _which_ wrong thing specifically she was referring to, but he simply wasn't going to tell her. It was as easy as that. Easy, except for the part where he had to convince her to drop the subject.

Kyoko's eyes darted to the drink in Ren's hand. He wondered briefly if the iciness of her gaze would do anything for the melting cubes diluting his scotch.

He smiled jovially. "Can't a grown man have a drink after a hard day at work?" he asked, innocently.

"_A_ drink, of course, is fine, Tsuruga-san. However, _two_ drinks when haven't home half an hour indicate a problem."

Ren's eyes widened. _How did she…?_ "How did you know this wasn't my first drink?"

"So I was right!"

"You were bluffing!"

"No, I could tell by your eyes. I worked at a ryoukan for all those years, Tsuruga-san, I know how to tell when a man is trying to get drunk quickly. It's in the eyes."

Ren sighed and admitted small defeat. He placed his drink on the coffee table, scooted forward a bit, and rested his elbows on his knees. "Look," he began, framing her within his hands, "look, it was a stressful day and I needed a drink. I'm not trying to get drunk. Surely you can understand why I would be a little stressed out today?" He knew how this was coming off. It would sound like he wanted her to leave him alone, which wasn't entirely untrue, but she would blow his meaning all out of proportion. She would stammer apologies, degrade herself, rush and stumble towards the door, bow ferociously on her way out, shamefully avoid him for the next few days, and probably drop the Setsuka job as some kind of warped actor's hara-kiri. Ren watched her and waited for the widening of the eyes which would indicate the start of her self-abasing tirade.

Kyoko remained planted firmly to his floor, watching him like he was a drunk, philandering liar and she was his sick-of-it wife. Ren staunchly refused to wither. They had a staring contest for about a minute, and right as Ren was about to lose (sigh, heave himself up by the knees, walk to the kitchen for a glass of water, try a different tack), Kyoko closed her eyes and exhaled.

She opened them again and her expression had changed. The accusatory-wife-thing was gone, replaced by a soft set to the jaw that made Ren think maybe he had lost after all.

"I don't believe you," she said, and Ren wasn't sure what she didn't believe.

So he asked. "I beg your pardon?"

"I don't believe you."

"What exactly don't you believe? This really is only my second drink…"

"It wasn't the shock of the accident."

_Damn._

"You had better think of a different excuse. I'm not the only one who isn't going to believe it."

Ren arched his eyebrows at her.

"You looked like you'd lost your soul."

Sirens went off in Ren's head and his character went into lockdown. He carefully blanked his face.

"I wasn't the one who said that, but I thought it too." She paused and lowered her gaze to her hands, then continued quietly. "It was the same expression you made after the fight outside Jeanne D'Arc. The expression you had in the car today. You looked terrified and vacant, like something had scared you so badly that you had to run away. Anybody who saw that face wouldn't believe it was just the shock of the accident." She lifted her face to him again. "And anybody who saw it twice wouldn't believe anything but the truth."

Tsuruga Ren regarded her for a moment, then rose smoothly from the couch. He collected his scotch and went to the kitchen where he poured a glass of water. When he returned to Kyoko, she was still kneeling in front of his couch, watching the place he had left. He offered her the glass, which she accepted elegantly, but without looking at him. She was expecting him to sit back down on that couch and explain himself to her. Like a man.

He did not return to the couch.

"To be completely frank with you, Mogami-san, I don't know why you think I should tell you anything." This was the tack. The surefire tack. Nothing subtle, nothing reassuring. The high-and-mighty senpai act got her every time. He hated himself for resorting to it, but telling her the truth as she demanded was simply out of the question. "Everyone has secrets they'd rather not discuss. The darkest secrets make for the best actors, they say. If there were some secret trouble that was affecting my acting, the only person I would be willing to discuss it with would be a respected mentor. Certainly not some newbie kohai who wouldn't be able to help at all." His words slipped from his mouth like cold cubes of frozen mercury, and with each he hated himself a bit more. He had said earlier, though, hadn't he? He would shove her away if that's what it took. Her concern was more than he could handle. Her innocence, her trust, her perfect little body. (He thought about the time in the hotel when he had buried his face in his hands because it was the only way to keep his wolf's eyes off her.) Everything about her implicated him. He needed her gone. If he lost her permanently, so be it. She'd be better off without him.

Tsuruga Ren watched her as from a great distance. He felt as though he had receded to a far corner of the ceiling and he was watching her in miniature. She looked so breakable. For a while, she didn't do anything, and he couldn't be sure that time hadn't just stopped like that.

Then, finally, she whispered. "I'm your protective charm."

Ren was shocked, by the twin facts that she hadn't run crying and that she was still trying to shoulder some responsibility. His attack was thorough; it went for all her weak points. How had it failed? "I beg your pardon?"

She looked up at him now and there _were_ tears in her eyes and Ren was helpless against his regret. "I'm your protective charm," she repeated, more loudly.

_Gotta channel this, channel the guilt, turn it into…_ He laughed at her. "What, are you talking about your LoveMe assignment? I don't care about that. I wasn't going to give you any points for it anyway so you might as well quit now." His mouth slipped into a little sneer. This was Tsuruga Ren's character flaw. He was a perfect gentleman until provoked, and then he got nasty. Swift and clever _nasty_. "You didn't want to accept this job in the first place, right? Just go back to the president and tell him you can't do it. I'll tell him too. You can't do it. You're afraid of BJ, you hate Setsuka, you have no idea how to play an adoring sister. You're useless to me. I don't need you." The president had said he would take Kyoko off the job if Ren told her himself. _I don't need you_ was all he had to say, and he'd believed himself incapable of saying it.

A little pool of tears spilled from Kyoko's eye, and Ren felt that he had never hated himself as much as he did at that very moment. This girl had saved him from his demons only a few hours ago, and here he was tearing her apart just to save himself again.

She stood up and he tightened his grip on his glass of scotch.

"What if something bad happens?" she yelled. Ren stared at her. "What if something really bad happens to you because you didn't have your charm? How am I ever supposed to forgive myself if I let something bad –"

"Didn't I just tell you that I don't care about your damn job? You can't help anyway so just qui –"

"Stop it!" She balled her hands into fists and clenched her eyes shut. "I'm not going to quit so stop telling me to!" Her voice broke. "I don't care if you think I can't help you, I'm still going to do my best because –" a sob broke through her words, and what followed sounded watery and desperate " – if something really bad happened to you and I hadn't even tried then I would never be able to forgive myself." Here she started wiping her cheeks with the backs of her fists, and her words were punctuated with tear-hiccups. "The president" hic "assigned me to you because" hic "he thought I could help" hic "so" hic "even if you don't want me" sob "I'll still – "

_Even if you don't want me_. That was where Ren completely broke down. His glass of scotch fell to the carpet and he went to her, pressed her to him, wanted her so badly that he couldn't stop himself, _needed _her to stop crying.

"That's not... I'm sorry, please don't cry. That's not what I meant, so please don't cry. I said that but I didn't mean it, I was just... I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, don't cry, please, I'm sorry." He soothed her hair and caressed her side; he spoke whatever words came to his mind, mumbled them quietly, his head bent as close to hers as he could get it. _This is pathetic_, he degraded himself._ I'm cruel to her on purpose but then I can't deal with the consequences, like an idiot brat. She has no reason to put up with this. She deserves better than an immature brat like me_. So he thought, but he squeezed her tighter, and she accepted his comfort as if he hadn't been the cause of her tears in the first place.

After a few minutes she quieted, then leaned away from him, and he hooked his sleeve over this thumb and began to wipe her tears away. When she took her fists away from her face she rested them against his chest, and he wasn't sure if the heat he felt was from that or the scotch.

"Mogami-san, I – "

"Tsurugan-san, you dropped your drink." She pulled out of his arms, shaking a little.

"Oh. Oh, yes, I did…"

She bent to pick up the scattered ice cubes, put them back in the glass.

"Um…" he hesitated, then went back to the kitchen for a towel. For a few moments they knelt together in silence, feeling the same rug against their knees, cleaning up his mess.

"Mogami-san, you know that Tsuruga Ren isn't my real name, right?"

Kyoko looked up from the glass of ice cubes, quiet and steady in her hands. "You told the beagle that it was your stage name," she said.

"And he had told me it was an alias." Ren inhaled. "What he said was more accurate." He waited for a response but gone none – she knelt politely as she had while cleaning, staring at him with wide and unflinching eyes. He wondered how he was expected not to love her, and how he was going to face her again after this. "The only person in Japan who knows my real name is the president. Even Yashiro-san doesn't know it." Her eyes widened just a little. "As far as I know, Yashiro-san thinks Tsuruga Ren _is_ my real name. It's the only name I've used since I came here."

"Since you came here… are you not Japanese?"

"I am Japanese but I'm not really from Japan. I grew up somewhere else, and…" He looked at her and suddenly she seemed so vulnerable, with her hands were wrapped around his scotch glass. She could fit them both around its circumference, fingers laced at the front but heels not touching in the back. When Ren held that glass in one hand his fingers overlapped with his thumb. Without cause, he felt like a villain.

"Mogami-san, do you remember when you told me that you were acting for the sake of creating a new Mogami Kyoko?"

"Eh? Ah, yes, I remember…" she blushed prettily and looked down. "You said you believed me."

"I did. I do" – pause – "Because I'm doing the same thing."

She looked back up at him, but not in surprise.

"I came to Japan to create a new me. I wanted to leave behind the person I had been and start over. I'm not trying to become Tsuruga Ren. My public persona is a character. He's not completely unlike myself, but the person I show my fans is not the person you've come over to cook dinner for, Mogami-san." He smiled unconsciously. "Actually, you might be the only person who's _forced_ me to break from Tsuruga Ren's character. I like him. He's not at all difficult for me to portray." He noticed he was smiling and hastily wiped it off his face. "But the character I'm playing right now… BJ is more like who I was before. When I was younger." There was the bombshell. Ren was surprised at himself for dropping it so soon. He had intended to drag this out a bit longer.

Kyoko stared at him with something he ardently hoped was not fear. "Tsuruga-san… you used to be like… BJ?"

"Well, not entirely like BJ, but…" He hadn't expected it to hurt so much, hearing those words come out of her mouth.

"You're afraid of yourself." It was a statement, and it carried the power of revelation. She figured it out, and she was right, and she knew it. "You're afraid that playing BJ will make you revert back to your old self, because you're capable of doing the same awful things that BJ is capable of."

"Not… not _all_ the same things…" _Why am I defending myself? Isn't she exactly right?_

"When I called out to nii-chan after the fight with those thugs, it wasn't really nii-chan. It was you, and you were terrified because you'd become your old self, not because you'd slipped into BJ's character."

"I don't think… it's not like I was actually going to beat that man to death, and Cain's a pretty violent character too, so…" He felt like a child who was trying to get out of trouble by making excuses. Except he was a grown man, and he _had _no excuses, and the person he was making excuses _to_ was more powerfully in control of his heart than his parents were these days. He felt like he was going to cry.

"But that's what happened. You weren't going to hold back and you were afraid, because that's who you used to be. A violent person who didn't hold back.

Ren closed his eyes.

"Tsuruga-san, why did you take that character then?" she asked earnestly. "You've done such a good job putting all that behind you, why did you take a character that would bring it close again? I had no idea you had been such a person. You're a little bit of a bully but I didn't think you'd hurt anyone –"

"I wouldn't hurt anyone," he interrupted, again like a child. And, like a child, what he said was only what he wished were true. "I would never hurt you, at least," he amended. "I can't guarantee I wouldn't hurt somebody if they posed a threat to y– to someone I cared about."

"I believe that."

Ren took a deep breath. _She believes me_. "The reason I took this role, Mogami-san, is to finally get rid of the person I used to be."

"Eh?"

"When you portray a character, that character becomes a part of yourself, right?"

"Definitely."

"You can live as that character. You don't even need a script anymore. When you get into character, it's like a different person takes over. You're not your own self anymore." He was stretching it – she was very talented, but she was very new. It was possible that she hadn't yet –

"Yes, yes! It's like her soul takes over! I don't even have to think about how to portray her anymore!" Kyoko's eyes sparkled. Ren smiled at her with gentle pride. She knew. She _knew_. She'd been bitten; the joy of acting would never leave her alone now. She would scream to the top like a meteor, and Ren would do whatever it took to keep himself by her side, watching, helping, riding her stardust tail.

He would blow his own cover on the gamble that she would stay by him anyway.

He smiled _that smile _at her, the one reserved especially for her, and for once she didn't look like it made her uncomfortable. But then he cleared his throat. He rose and offered her a hand, which she accepted after minimal hesitation. They went to the kitchen with the scotch soaked things. "But Mogami-san," he continued, his back to her. "The fact that you _can_ live as your character doesn't mean that you _must_."

She pulled abreast of him at the sink and looked up at him quizzically.

"You can get back out of the character, I mean." He wetted a fresh towel with cold tap water, handed it to her.

"Of course." She accepted the towel.

"The character remains inside you always, like another piece of yourself, but it's a piece you have more control over." He returned to the couch and sat down.

Kyoko stood in front of him for a moment, watching him, damp towel clasped in both hands. Ren had intended to finish his explanation, get it done in one go, but the way she was staring at him kept his mouth closed. She had a knack for showing expressions that he didn't know how to react to. This time, with her tear stained cheeks and clear, open eyes, the only thing he could think to do was shut up. He gazed up at her, both desperate and terrified to know what she was thinking. He kept his eyes on her as she sat down next to him, prim is a rose.

"You want to conquer your old self," she said.

He stared. That was… not quite how he'd thought of it.

"You want to seal your old self away." She whipped her face to him, showing an earnest expression, a much more familiar one to him. "Like a curse! You want to put a cursed seal on your old self so he can't get out again and terrorize anyone!"

Involuntarily, the corners of Ren's mouth twitched.

"You're like a knight who used to be a villain! A tragic hero trying to make up for the sins of his past!" She sparkled at him.

His face crinkled around the eaves. _How many fairy tales is she going to put me in?_

"Or you're like – "

"Mogami-san," he interrupted her, because he wouldn't have been able to contain his laughter if she kept going. He took the damp towel from her hands, touched it to her cheek. "Why don't you cool your face a bit?"

"O-oh, yes, of course." She took the towel from him and dabbed at her eyes and cheeks.

"You're right," he said, turning from her. "That's what I'm trying to do. And you're right that I'm afraid of myself, too. I'm afraid that I can't do it."

"That's why I'm your protective charm." She was facing him and smiling, cool cloth still pressed to a cheek, and he didn't quite understand.

"Hunh?"

"I'll be your protective charm. I believe you can do it, Tsuruga-san, so I'll help you. Whenever it seems like you're going too far, I'll call you back."

Had he ever seen that smile on her face before? Yes, but rarely, very rarely, a few times when she was a child, or these days, when they spoke about acting, or maybe about that Kotonami girl she was so infatuated with. He had never seen it directed at _him_. A slow happiness began to spread throughout his entire body.

But then her expression darkened. "However, Tsuruga-san, if I could request that you make an earnest effort to control yourself as much as possible. My heart can't handle it if I have to watch you get in fistfights with strangers or near-miss car accidents _every day_."

He laughed, a warm and heavy bubbling sound, like a hot spring filling up his chest. "I'll do my best, Mogami-san. Tha –"

"Oh!" She interrupted his sincere expression of affection for the second time that day. The moment between their shoot locations, when he had tried to tell her that she was amazing – it seemed like eons ago, but it had just been that afternoon. "Actually, that reminds me – what was it about the car accident that affected you so much? I don't really see why that would have reminded you of your scary former self. Did you drive dangerously a lot? Were you like a Hell's Angel?"

"What? No! Hell's Angel's ride motorcycles, not sports cars. Um, I was… " he faltered. "I wasn't the driver, but there was an accident…" _Why am I chickening out now?_ But actually telling her, _I was responsible for the death of my friend. I'm a murderer._ The thought of actually saying it was petrifying. He felt a cold panic start to grow where the happiness had been.

"It's ok if you don't want to talk about it," she said. "I don't need to know details, Tsuruga-san." She looked at her lap and Ren thought he saw the hint of a blush on her cheeks. But that might have just been left-over flush from the tears. "But if it's alright with you, I'd like to hear as much as you care to tell me. Whenever you're ready to talk about it."

With that the happiness was back, moving like hot fudge sauce over ice cream, smooth and warm and irresistible all down his arm, to his fingertips where they touched the back of her head, pooling at his elbow where it rested against her shoulders, his lips where they pressed against her forehead. She was sweet against his mouth.

"Thank you," he whispered. "Thank you."

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**Edited 1.10.11**

**A/N 12/17/11: **So someone left me a review a while ago noting that Ren is OOC. This is true. When I first started writing this piece, we fans didn't know much about Kuon at all, and it turns out that the way I've depicted Kuon, and Ren as he deals with Kuon, is noticeably different from the direction that Nakamura-sensei has taken canon. I beg your lenience in this. よろしくおねがいします。


	2. There Are More Secrets In Heaven

**There Are More Secrets In Heaven And Earth...**

"I need proof that I'm still real," he told her. He was standing just past her, parallel but beyond, close enough that she could feel his body heat, but too far away to see what he was feeling.

But then she figured it out.

After shooting for the last scenes of Dark Moon had wrapped – and that horrible fiasco with the car accident, and the soul-bearing session on the floor of Ren's living room – the focus of both Kyoko's and Ren's lives had shifted heavily to the business of being Cain and Setsuka Heel. And to BJ. Kyoko found it easier and easier to slip under Setsuka. She'd had Setsuka's tastes down from the very beginning, but now she could walk like her, cop her gestures, orbit her big brother, all with practically no effort at all. She was even getting to be more comfortable around Ren. _He's just a man_, she had realized that night. _He's a god-like actor, my eternally respected senpai, a creature of universally acknowledged power and grace, a tortured soul haunted by the evil ghost of his former self, but he's also just a man_. It was almost disappointing – like finding out that Santa Claus isn't real – but even more than that, it was intoxicating. Like finding out that "Santa Claus" isn't real, but there _is_ a kindly old white-bearded man who loves children and the color red and runs a toy design-manufacture-delivery company out of his home in the icy Nordic north and wants _you_ to come work for him. (Potentially while wearing an elf outfit and driving reindeer. Gotta keep up the image.) She loved acting with him, and as long as she kept reminding herself that she was still many tectonic ages behind him in terms of acting skill, she allowed herself a small pinch of pride in the thought that she was actually helping him somehow. She walked around most days with a sort of fuzzy little warmness in her tummy. She figured it was happiness.

This all meant, of course, that another problem had to crop up.

Kyoko was having a hard time breaking out of Setsuka. That day on the set of Box R, when she had delivered Natsu's lines as if Setsu were saying them, had been just the beginning. Though, for the most part, she did a thorough job of keeping it from interfering with her work, and after that first time she only made two or three really minor slip-ups while playing Natsu (like a slightly bored expression where Natsu should have shown contempt, or sitting quite still when Natsu would have been examining her finger nails or something). The real problem was everyday life. Tokyo was home to an abnormally large population of people who thought that walking around in elaborate costumes was perfectly acceptable, and sometimes Kyoko would catch sight of a particularly well-dressed goth or goth-loli traipsing about in intricate layers of plain black, usually with ridiculous heels. She would see these people and instead of thinking something normal like, "Gyah!" or "Wha-?" she would think "Uwaaa, I bet Setchan would love that leathery web-looking shawl thing!" And she would be triggered. Ten minutes later she would walk out of some dark-windowed specialty boutique holding a fresh bag and the curious attention of both shop owner and passersby, and then suddenly snap back out of character.

It was even worse when Ren was around. Just catching a glimpse of him from the other end of a long LME hallway was sometimes enough to set Setsuka off. It made Kyoko uncomfortable. It wasn't that she didn't love Setsuka, or didn't like portraying her, but the fact that she couldn't always be confident of who was living in her own skin was not something she enjoyed. _This should just make more empathetic toward Tsuruga-san_, she reasoned. _Tsuruga-san is living like this every day, having to worry if he'll suddenly look up and realize that somebody else has taken over_. But in a way it also reminded her of her days at the Fuwa's ryoukan, when she was so deeply subsumed beneath the person they wanted her to be that she didn't even know that that person wasn't _her_. And it made her avoid him a little.

That was why, when he asked her, one night when the light had long since faded from the studio lobby, and they were coincidentally alone together in a windowless hallway near the acting section, and he pinned her with his stare and asked outright,

"Are you avoiding me?" she didn't have a ready answer for him. She straightened her posture, brought her hands together in front of her chest, looked down.

But she could feel his eyes on her like a searchlight, and she knew she had to say something.

"Tsu-tsurga-san, do you… do you ever have a problem with… with breaking character?" She examined closely the lace of her left shoe as she spoke. He didn't respond and all she could feel was his aura getting icier. Her hate antenna rose leisurely, stretched a bit, then went berserk. It had been a while since she had made him this angry, but she quickly reverted to her old, terrified habits – winding herself up in a noose of self-loathing, then mentally handing the hangman's end of the rope to Ren. _Of course he doesn't, stupid. An amazing actor like Tsuruga-san couldn't possibly have the same kind of newbie problem as you. It was insulting even to ask. You have insulted Tsuruga-san, and he's furious, and he's going to flay you with his steel-tipped tongue then roast you like a toad over the hellacious flames of his righteous indignation_ (she writhed in imagination). _Oh no! It's worse! Not only have you presumptuously dared to suggest a fault in your highly esteemed senpai, you have revealed to him your own hopeless failings! Oh noooooooooooo!_ (more imagined flailing) _What if he never forgives me? What if he gives up on me completely? _(Cue imaginary volcanic explosions followed by imaginarily plummeting into the craters created thereby.)

She was so absorbed in her own nervousness, so intimidated by his displeasure, that she didn't spare even the slimmest thought for what he was feeling. She fastened her eyes to a rivet of her sneaker and would not look up, which was a small tragedy, because had she seen his face at that moment she would have known _exactly _what he was feeling, and that would have changed everything.

"Uh… um, I mean, it's not all the time, I mean, it's, ah, it's just sometimes, you know, maybe, every once in a while that, um, I, um I have a little bit of trouble breaking out of, ah, what I mean to say is, sometimes without meaning to I maybe a little bit… become… Setsuka?" She glanced up hesitantly, praying that she hadn't just ruined everything.

But now Ren's face was impossible for her to read – something like relief in the eyes, but a grimness to the mouth.

"Ummm…" she began again, looking down again.

"Not often," he said.

She brought her head up to respond but he had already taken two long strides, was already past her field of view.

"Were you afraid that I did?" he asked, and his voice was icy.

"No, no! Not at all! Definitely not!" She shook her head vigorously. "It's just that…"

"Then why have you been avoiding me?"

Kyoko cringed. It was the coldest voice she had ever heard out of him. _I really have ruined everything_, the thought. _I'm such a fool. Just because you got a little closer to him, you got carried away and did something totally unforgiveable... _

"Why" – his voice cracked – "have you been avoiding me?"

She started. His voice… cracked? _No way… I couldn't possibly have…_ The audacity of what she was thinking was so great that she couldn't bear to finish thinking it. "I couldn't have hurt his feelings, could I?" But that was totally, utterly, cosmically impossible. How could some plain, boring, no-sex-appeal –

Ren drew in a loud breath, and Kyoko realized she was pausing.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I was avoiding you because it's harder to avoid Setsuka when you're around. I'm sorry if that – if that bothered you."

Kyoko was struck by the sudden, strange sensation that a wall was crumbling silently right behind her.

Ren expelled a breath he had been holding. "I see," he said. "Ok." Then, "Don't avoid me anymore. I'll warn you if you turn into Setsuka. You have to learn how to fight character bleed anyway. Just, please. Please don't avoid me."

And that was when he said it, with soft voice and trembling emotion: "I need proof that I'm still real."

It took her a moment, but when she understood it was with the single slide-click of a deadbolt. She really had hurt his feelings. He had divulged to her that he was afraid of himself and the character he was playing, and the next thing she did was start avoiding him. She put first her own selfish desire to be comfortable when what she _should_ have done, when what _he_ desperately needed her to do, was stay by his side and tell him not to be scared. Kyoko was disgusted with herself. She _knew_ that was what he needed from her; he had told her as much; she had believed him; it was why she had called herself his protective charm. But her selfishness and insecurities won out _again_ and she had hurt the most amazing, god-like, inimitable, admirable man she had ever met.

"Of course you're real," she said to him, and her voice was firm and bright. "Tsuruga-san, the person you are right now is very real. I know it. Don't worry, I won't avoid you anymore". She paused, considering. Then, "Ne, Tsuruga-san, have you eaten dinner yet? You were going to skip again, weren't you?" She sighed. "How many times do I have to remind you of the importance of caring properly for your body? An actor's body is his capital, you know." It was a lecture she was accustomed to giving with fervor and much shaking of index fingers, but this time she delivered it with calm authority, like an adult speaking to a dear child. "If you're done working, how about I make you something? I'd feel much more comfortable if I knew you'd eaten a nutritious home-cooked meal."

He was silent behind her. She could feel nothing of his aura, only his body heat, and for a moment she was terrified she had missed the mark.

But then, "I'd love that," he said quietly. "Why don't you meet me at my car in a few minutes?"

Her whole face relaxed into a smile. "Alright!" she chirped, and continued down the hall.

**Edited 1.10.11**


	3. How Truth Begins to Move

**A/N: This used to be chapter 4! But I have rearranged chapters so that they make sense chronologically, so now this is chapter 3 and what _was_ chapter 3 is being pushed all the way out to chapter 7.**

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**How The Truth Begins to Move  
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Dinner at Ren's house became a fairly regular thing after that. He started buying the ingredients beforehand so she wouldn't have to, and once or twice they ordered take-out Chinese, his treat. Shooting for Ren's movie dragged on, Box R wound up, Kyoko started another drama, Ren kept busy with promotional appearances, modeling gigs, commercials, etc, and at some point in the middle of it all Kyoko got a key to his apartment. It was too complicated to meet up at LME all the time. Everything would be so much simpler if they could just agree to meet at the apartment after work. And if Kyoko got there too early, she could study or prepare for roles in peace. That was Ren's line of reasoning, anyway. In the end, Kyoko only agreed because doing so meant she could more easily ensure that her gastronomically irresponsible senpai ate a decent dinner with greater frequency.

That was why she agreed to the proposition, but it didn't mean that she didn't enjoy all the other benefits he had mentioned. She'd recently stopped helping out at Daruma-Ya – her schedule was becoming too tight and unpredictable, and sometimes new customers would recognize her face, wondering aloud where they'd seen her before. She loved the couple and the shop, but it was no longer a place of relaxation during business hours. It only felt like home when it was so late that all the lights were out, or so early that not a single light was needed. And studying at LME was practically impossible – her malicious pink jumpsuit made her the target of every gopher-sender in the building. So whenever she was exhausted and frantic about upcoming tests and wanted to go home, she went to Ren's apartment.

Kyoko carefully avoided thinking about the implications of this fact. Ren built a tower in his heart atop them.

One still wintry evening when she expected to have Tsuruga Ren's apartment to herself for a few hours, Kyoko hummed through the door to find him sleeping on the couch.

"Geh!" she said, and plastered herself back against the door. She had been looking forward to some solitude. Between school, which she had to attend _occasionally, _LoveMe work,filming for Box R, and the ever ramping pace of Cain Heel's life, Kyoko hadn't had more than ten minutes of waking silence at a stretch in the past five days. She was getting exhausted. But then she remembered that this was _Ren's_ apartment, and that he was getting easier and easier to deal with lately, and even if she slipped into Setsuka he wouldn't mind and would pull her right back out of it. She sighed, a small smile filtering across her face, and removed her shoes.

It was an especially cold day, so she also had an overcoat and scarf to unwind before she could deposit her things in the kitchen. She hung them on the rack by the door as quietly as she could, although the swishing they made wasn't really in danger of waking the man on the couch anyway. Beneath the overcoat she wore a fitted sweater the color of wine, a short denim skirt, tights of a sort of neutral navy hue, and a pair of knee socks which more or less matched her sweater. She probably would have been warmer and less inconvenienced by a pair of pants, but Mogami Kyoko just wasn't a pants-wearing type of girl. She didn't remember anymore, but once when she was very small her mother had told her that only sleazy women wore trousers. Kyoko couldn't agree less, but that exchange was probably what had set her preferences.

Buffeted by two pairs of stockings and propelled by Kyoko's well-trained grace, her footfalls made all the noise of a declawed cat as she padded into the kitchen. In addition to her usual bag, she also had a small plastic bag of groceries containing things she had forgotten to tell Ren to pick up – a potato, two carrots, an apple. They were having curry rice for dinner. She settled the bags on the table with the softest of crinkles, but when Ren didn't so much as shift in his sleep she stopped being so careful.

She even started singing quietly to herself as she moved through the kitchen collecting utensils. Curry was a stewing sort of dish rather than a sautéing sort, so she figured she could cook the whole meal without waking her host. The song she sang was Ruriko's latest hit, a pop ballad with a catchy, easy to sing chorus. Kyoko replaced the lovesick lyrics with cooking narration.

"Chop, chop, chopping up the carrooooooooots, oooh ooh, chopping the apple toooooooo."

Cooking, like sewing, was a cathartic action for Kyoko and by the time she put the rice on and was settling down at the dining room table to start on her homework she was feeling perfectly reenergized. She had a textbook open and was tapping the eraser of her mechanical pencil thoughtfully against her mouth when she remembered with a start that she wasn't alone. Still sleeping like a stone on the couch was the uncharacteristically sprawled form of Tsuruga Ren. She watched him with furrowed brows. He'd thrown his sports coat over the back of the couch but otherwise he was dressed to kill – slick black trousers, a deep v-cut shirt, a black leather belt tight at his waist, the pendant of one of his more eye-catching necklaces resting askew on an exposed pectoral. He had one arm tucked under his head but the other was dangling over the side of the couch. A white-socked foot was hooked awkwardly on the armrest because his legs were too long to fit quite comfortably. His face was defenseless. Kyoko thought he looked vulnerable. She began to worry.

"I'd better make sure he's okay," she muttered, rising. Horrible fantasies sent her mind-self wailing, thoughts of him being passed out with fever, or having overdosed on sleeping pills – celebrities were known to do such things – or even being secretly dead for hours with her in the apartment and completely unaware. She approached him silently and with great trepidation.

"Uwaaa, he's breathing." His chest rose and fell with slow rhythm and she expelled a relieved breath.

And then caught it back. She'd been worried before, and worry was a powerful enough emotion in the mind of Mogami Kyoko to block out all other thoughts. But now that she wasn't worried, she was confronted with the fact that she was leaning over the sleeping body of the most beautiful man in all of Japan. The skin of his face was smooth and clear, soft-looking on his cheek but pulled taught by the masculine angles of his jaw. He had full lips, the well-defined nose so rare and coveted by the Japanese, and a lock of silky black hair falling across his brow. A memory, and a blush, rose unbidden and she found herself wondering how she had ever thought of anything about this man as "cute." There were many favorable terms she could think to apply to him, but at the moment "cute" was practically an insult. He was divine.

A smile glowed across her face. She settled neatly onto the couch and reached a hand out to brush his hair back.

"Tsuruga-san," she said. "Are you sure you want to be sleeping this long?" Her thumb lingered for a moment on his temple. She could feel his pulse, strong and steady.

He shifted. "Hnnrrnnn," he said. Kyoko drew her hand back but let it catch on his shoulder when a look of discomfort flitted across his features.

"Tsuruga-san?"

His eyes opened to her slowly. The sheer sex appeal he radiated was forceful enough to power its way past Kyoko's fresh worry and provoke a new blush. He drew a deep, waking breath and shifted a little to his back. Kyoko's hand, finding his shoulder suddenly too far away to rest upon, migrated back toward her body.

Until Ren caught it. His movements were swift and powerful – completely in keeping with his muscular physique, but catching Kyoko totally off guard in the present context. _Wasn't he just sleeping?_ He slid his hand up to her elbow and tugged her down to him, buffeting her impact with the arm that had been under his head. Wrapped thoroughly in his strength, Kyoko was helpless as he fitted her against his chest and settled back to slumber. She went into freak out mode. He had one arm wrapped around her from beneath, the other wrapped around from above, and hands resting possessively on her hip and shoulder. His breathing and his heartbeat – _OH MY GOD I can hear his heart beat!_ – were steady, and he relaxed against her as if nothing out of the ordinary had just occurred.

Kyoko, on the other hand, was stiff as a dried fish, with a facial expression to match. Her heart, in direct contrast to that of a dried fish, was pounding. "Tsu-" she squeaked. "Tsuruga-san!"

Ren made no response.

She squeaked again, incomprehensibly, then tried saying his name louder. "Tsuruga-san!"

This time Ren mumbled something indistinct, tucking his chin down in the direction of her neck and bringing his mouth within millimeters of her ear. The movement put a little space between them - his forehead was now resting against the top of her head but at least she was no longer crushed to his chest. She leaned back as much as was possible to get a look at him.

It was a reflexive decision, and a bad one. She realized suddenly, stupidly, as if it hadn't been true until that precise second, that she was within kissing distance of Tsuruga Ren. Her eyes began to swirl dizzily and she ducked her head back down, inadvertently burying it in his chest, and brought her hands to her face as if doing so would also block out the myriad sensations his body was producing all over hers.

"Tsuruga-san, wake up!" she shouted.

This time he did. The sound of arrested breath and a sudden shift in his weight told her so. Using the arm which had been wrapped around the front of her, he levered himself up and slid his other arm out from underneath her. Kyoko kept her hands securely over her face but she could feel him hover like that for a moment or two

Then he got up, and the couch and Kyoko sighed with relief. She peeked between her fingers and saw his erect back and a hand running through his hair. When he made for the kitchen, she deemed it safe to get up herself.

"Tsu-tsu-tsuruga-san…" She followed him to the kitchen and was surprised when he picked up a wooden spoon and began absently poking at the pan of curry. She had made it clear back when she first started cooking for him that he would help her most by staying out of the kitchen, and until now he had been quite obedient in this. He kept his face averted from her but she detected a strange, pink glow reflecting off the tile backsplash.

"Sorry about that," he said quietly. "I, uh… I wasn't really awake."

For a moment, Kyoko debated with herself. Her first inclination was to apologize for being so close to him in the first place, possibly to perform a dogeza right there on his kitchen floor. But this was overridden by the undeniable fact that _he_ had pulled _her_ down onto the couch in a shamelessly compromising position. Faced with that truth, she felt empowered, nay, obliged, to release upon him a lecture in propriety that would make her lecture after that cheek-kissing incident seem like a gentle warning. But superseding all of these reactions was an epochal embarrassment. Her heart still pounded, her face still burned, and her body tingled all over – especially her hip, her shoulder, and her ear. She felt uncomfortably like the nerve endings in her body had doubled, and reassigned half of their new total to those three places. She was pretty sure they were pulsing red.

_I have become a filthy woman!_ she accused herself._ I have lain with a man! I have been caressed by a man! How can I call myself a champion of Japanese modesty when I am powerless against the machinations of my own senpai?_ Because, after all, while she'd had the proper sense to not snuggle up, she hadn't exactly pushed him away either. And – _I will be damned if I admit this to him_ – the person to initiate the first touch had been none other than Kyoko herself.

Then she noticed that the tips of Ren's ears were bright red, and she _couldn't_ yell at him. Turning her back to his, she stuttered a half-hearted reprisal. "We-well that was obvious enough. But still, Tsuruga-san, you should be more aware of your surroundings. You can't just go around dragging random women down onto couches with you. It's com-com-completely inappropriate." She placed her hands on her hips and showed an unconvincing face to the side of the room that did not contain Ren.

There was silence.

When she finally gained the courage to turn around, Kyoko found Tsuruga Ren regarding her with open interest. Her blush brightened.

"That's it?" he asked.

"Wha-wha-what do you mean?" She looked hastily down. "I told you, didn't I? You need to be more careful with… um…" She trailed off. _Idiot! Why are you trailing off at a time like this? "You need to be more conscientious of your position as Japan's Number 1 Sexy Guy and not easily pull women into suggestive poses on couches!" Just say that to him! Why can't you say that?_

"That's all you're going to say? No threats, no hour-long lecture? No terrifying Mio-esque fury?"

Kyoko stuttered at the floor.

"You can't possibly mean to say," she heard the spoon come to rest against the pan, and cringed. "You can't really intend to mean," his stockinged feet came into view, "that you actually enjoyed," he snaked an arm around her waist, "that little interlude?" He pulled her close, placed two fingers beneath her chin and tilted her face up to him.

Kyoko squeaked.

_"Because if that's the case, I'd be more than happy to pick back up where we left off."_ That's what his face was saying. It was the face of the Emperor of the Night, and he was wordlessly propositioning her, and she was terrified. She braced her hands against his chest in an attempt to shove away, but his one arm around her had more muscle strength than she had probably in her whole body. Her lips quivered and tears collected at the corners of her eyes.

"N-no! Nooooooo!" She beat her fists against him, clenched her eyes, shook her head vigorously. She looked like a child who has been asked if she'd like to be responsible for cleaning the whole house from now on as punishment for some selfishness. "Tsuruga-san, come back! I don't want to be eaten alive by the Emperor of the Night! Noooo, Tsuruga-saaaaan!"

Much to her chagrin, rather than releasing her, Ren's weight on her actually increased. He was leaning down into her, arm still tight against her waist, and he was shaking.

And laughing. Hysterically. "Oh god…" he gasped between laughs. "The Emperor of what?"

Kyoko opened her eyes to see his grin-split face practically planted into her left shoulder, one huge hand attempting and utterly failing to cover his mirth.

"The _Emperor_ of the _Night_?" He squeezed tighter, leaned more heavily against her, shook her whole body with his laughter. "Oh god! Please tell me you came up with that by yourself!"

The color of Kyoko's blush stayed roughly the same, but the reason for it changed significantly. "You… but… your face! It's… that face… you can't… Gah!" – here his face actually made contact with her shoulder, and the hand that had been covering it moved to rest comfortably at the base of her neck – "I-it's not funny! That face is a danger to women!" He kept laughing at her splutters for a few more moments until they both became aware of an unpleasant odor and Kyoko screeched, "The curry!"

Ren released her gently (Kyoko noticed but, suddenly preoccupied by the curry, did not bother about the finger tips that lingered on her waist as he pulled away). While he was composing himself, wiping laugh-tears from his eyes, Kyoko rushed to the stove, stirring and cajoling their dinner.

"No, my lovely curry, it's ok, don't be burned…"

Ren came to stand behind her, peering over her shoulder to the pan of curry below. "I don't really eat curry very often, but… is it supposed to be that brown color?"

Kyoko spun to face him, showing a truly frightening expression to his collar bone. He took a single, long step back, both so that he could see her better and so that he could get out of her immediate kill zone.

"Ahhh…"

"The curry is ruined," she told him. "It is ruined. The potatoes have burned to the bottom of the pan. The carrots have turned to mush. To answer your question, no, curry is not supposed to be that brown color. Our dinner is now inedible."

A casual observer might have thought she'd gone Mio, what with the electricity sparking from her eyes and the evil purple-black aura she was emitting. This was not the case. Rather, she was experiencing the righteous fury of a true cook and nurturer whose culinary plans have been spoiled by the antics a frivolous child. This sort of emotion had probably contributed to her creating Mio's hatefulness in the first place.

Ren, demonstrating what a casual observer would immediately identify as, but then probably refuse to believe actually was genuine fear, took another half step back.

He waved his hands in placating gestures, started and aborted about six different apologies. Kyoko continued to glower at him. In the distance, out-of-season thunder rolled lustily.

And then her face relaxed into that adorable, resigned expression, and she sighed, and turned the burner off.

Ren fought another laugh, although he could not have said exactly what he wanted to laugh about.

"So?" She turned back to him. "What are we doing about dinner?"

He stared at her for a moment while their eyes had a brief, silent conversation:

_Why are you asking me? You're the master chef!_

_And you're the troublemaker who caused this mess. Fix it yourself_.

He surveyed his kitchen, trying to remember what he had in his cabinets – it was Kyoko who kept them stocked – and weighing the benefits of asking her to start cooking all over again versus suggesting unhealthy take out. He offered her an awkward smile. "Umm… how about… Chinese?"

**Edited 1.10.11**


	4. Confession, Denial

**A/N: A brand new chapter where chapter 4 used to be! It's a long one... hope none of you mind. Because I ought to state it in at least one of these chapters, standard disclaimers apply. I own nothing. Actually, this chapter kinda kicked my butt. It's written from both Ren's and Kyoko's POV, but even with that concession I'm not sure all their emotions come across clearly :\ Soo... R&R plz!**

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**Confession, Denial**

It was another night that Kyoko had not expected to see Ren in his own apartment. It was close to eleven, she had already eaten her dinner and put her kitchen back in order (she was beginning to think of it as her kitchen, despite the fact that it was in his house) and was trying to wrap up some homework so she could catch the last train back to her section of Tokyo. She was becoming more and more used to, and grateful for, the fact that he let her treat his apartment as an extension of her own home. Even when he wasn't present she could relax into his furniture like she had a right to be there. (Although she did sometimes still blush at his couch, even though that ridiculous Emperor of the Night incident was weeks old already.) She yawned and stretched, surveying her books spread across the dining room table.

"Maybe I should just call it a night…"

Ren hadn't been expecting to see Kyoko that evening either. He had an appearance one of those late shows that kept a live band and a studio audience and he wasn't supposed to get home until well past midnight. Which was unpleasant, because he had a photo shoot the next morning that would require him to be in Kyoto by 9 o'clock. Even by bullet train that was more than a three hour trip.

But there had been a conflict of egos. Another actor/model's manager had mistaken (been misinformed of, he claimed) the date of his client's appearance and they had shown up on the set about 10 minutes before Ren and Yashiro. The star was noisily offended by the stage manager's suggestions that his presence on set was a problem, asserting that there was no bigger star than he scheduled for that night and therefore no possible problem. Both the stage manager and the show host had greeted Ren like he was the Messiah when he walked in – he indeed _was_ a bigger star than the misscheduled actor and they hoped that his unquestioned clout, and the legendary abilities of his faithful shadow Yashiro Yukihito, would send the schmuck and his manager packing.

The schmuck was not so compliant. He had prepared an extended sneak peek of his latest drama project and was not taking we're-sorry-can't-you-just-wait-to-promote-it-next-week for an answer. Aside from Ren vs Schmuck there were three other guests scheduled for the night – a young female idol with little in the way of true talent but an absolutely enormous fan base, a political comic, and a four piece musical guest. The idol was a huge fan of Ren's and, once she learned of the conflict, tried to tip the result in her desired direction by refusing to appear on the show if Ren didn't. Which only served to make the Schmuck angrier and more belligerent. The band claimed they had been promised more screen time than just the end-of-show song they were currently scheduled for – they wanted an interview and a chance to promote their new CD. The comic didn't particularly care who appeared on the show but was eating up all the negative energy. Every time one combatant fell behind, he dropped a clever witticism that put that put them back in the running. Ren found him more infuriating than all the others combined, and he was already fighting a strong desire to strangle the Schmuck.

Yashiro was doing his diplomatic best but no party budged. They could have fit all five guests into the show if they all agreed to a little less solo time, but neither the band nor the Schmuck would hear of that. The comic offered to drop his solo time altogether in favor of sharing airtime with everyone, but even the insipid little idol could see what a bad idea _that _was. Ren had his gentlemanly smile turned up to eleven and stood in the background sipping a double shot Americano and trying to find nonviolent things to do with his hands.

Finally, he couldn't take it anymore. He downed the rest of the coffee (scalding his throat quite badly in the process) and approached the debate.

"Yashiro-san," he interrupted, smiling his most brilliant professional smile. The idol's eyes melted into hearts and she swooned. Yashiro mustered all of his managerial experience to keep from visibly quailing; Ren's most acerbic comments were usually accompanied by that very smile.

"Sorry, Ren, we're still working out terms of agreement…"

"Why don't we just let Jun-san have the spot tonight?"

The debate stared at him with a collective jaw drop.

"I think this opportunity may be more important to his career than mine, and I do have that early photo shoot tomorrow." Schmuck's face turned red. "I'm sure we can reschedule my appearance for some other time." He nodded at the host and stage manager.

"Ah, well, Ren, that would be fine, but we did promise them an appearance and – " Yashiro produced a small, black, leather bound book from his coat pocket, "it may be quite some time before you have another Friday night free. You've got on-site shoots for at least the next three weeks, a benefit ball the first weekend of next month, that meeting with the producer who did _Forest of Spirals_, I have no idea what that's about, his secretary was being really cagey…"

"How about I promise to give Tanaka-san my first promotional appearance for my current project?"

"Which proj – _that_ project?"

"Of course."

"Ren, you don't even know what the director will green-light _any_ advertisement for that project whatsoever, never mind when he'll let you start promoting it personally."

"But it's certain to make quite a splash when it _does_ get the green light."

"That's… that's true…" Yashiro turned to Tanaka and the stage manager. "We can work out the particulars later, but would you be willing to agree to a tentative exclusive interview for an as-yet unannounced project? I'm afraid details are under tight restriction at the moment, but I can promise that the nature of the project itself will generate a lot of buzz in the next few months." Ren and Yashiro both watched eyebrows shoot up on all sides of the debating polygon.

The show host and the stage manager traded an openly calculating look and addressed Yashiro just before the teen idol exploded into wails. Ren stepped in to perform damage control – placating women was a special skill of his – and the various managers gratefully ignored her to confer among themselves.

"Now, now Yuuki-chan, you're a pro right?" She was many orders of magnitude distant from Ren's conception of an entertainment professional, but at the moment he was not above abusing the term if it would get him out of that studio any faster.

She wiped tears away from her cheeks – _not_ her eyes – with carefully manicured nails.

"Pros can't back out of a job just because they don't like one of their coworkers. I'm sure we'll get a chance to work together some other time."

"But, but, but… Tsuruga-samaaaaaaa!"

Ren smiled down at her with a most convincing expression of affection. "If you really want to work with me, you have to be a professional I can respect. You can be that, right Yuuki-chan?"

Yuuki-chan dried her crocodile tears, but kept a pout for good measure. "Of course I can!"

"Then, until next time." He smiled at her – dazzling and furious – and held out his hand to shake, which she did not take in favor of swooning into her manager's suddenly appearing arms.

"Then I'll fax the details to your office tomorrow afternoon." Yashiro concluded his groundwork negotiations with typically perfect timing, and he and Ren turned in unison and left the studio.

Yashiro opted to take a taxi since his home and Ren's were in opposite directions from the studio, and also because he knew he would make no headway with Ren in his current mood. This presumptuous interview promise was not going to sit well with Cain Heel's director, and they needed a good story and a united front ready for when they told him about it. But they were going to be on a train for at least 7 hours total the next day, so Yashiro figured they could discuss it then.

Ren enjoyed his manager's company, but on this night he welcomed a solitary car ride. His temper was at the boiling point and he didn't want it to spill all over poor Yashiro. Yashiro had been nothing but helpful, and it wasn't even Tsuruga Ren's temper he would have been feeling. Ren had been expecting it, but it was still miserably difficult to deal with – all of Kuon's dark old emotions, his guilt, his resentment, his violent anger, were seeping into Ren's life like a steam cooker. He was becoming saturated with feelings he had learned to simply turn off rather than cope with, and he would not be able to forgive himself if he allowed them to damage his relationships _again_.

He missed Kyoko terribly – shooting for his movie was taking a brief break and as a consequence he hadn't seen her in almost three days. Dropping into Cain Heel was an easy out for him, when she was around – she would immediately join him as Setsuka and clean his anger away. Even if he couldn't escape into character, she made him happy. His temper still made her nervous, which was ample impetus for him to clamp down on it, and the smile she gifted him with when he did so quickly replaced all his exasperation with soft and giddy pleasure. It still didn't qualify as "coping," but at least he didn't make any trouble.

She wasn't going to be there when he got home – which was probably for the best, as he was feeling especially irascible and was about as loath to say something to upset her as was confident that he would be unable to avoid doing so – but he would at least feel the echoes of her presence. She went to his place nearly every day; he knew because she left clean dishes in the dryer rack. It warmed his heart to know that she had been there, in his home, suffusing it with her innocence. He tried to figure out where she had sat – sometimes she left a pencil or a flick of notebook paper – and he would settle in there, imagining that he could catch her lingering sweetness like a contagion.

He collected all his dark emotions on his face as he turned the key in the lock, preparing to drown them all in one tall drink and wait for the slow influence of imagined memories of her to soothe him to sleep.

When her shoes greeted him from the landing, he looked up startled. His face was a stir fry of anger and resentment with just a pinch of surprise and Kyoko assumed, quite reasonably, that he was annoyed with her for being there. This took her off guard, and produced in her chest the queerest and most unpleasant of sensations, like she was being squeezed by some needle-lined machine.

"You… you're angry," she said obviously, then began scrambling to pull together her things. "Of course you're angry. Who wouldn't be? You've had a long day, you want to come home and relax and instead you find your foolish kohai sitting at your table like it's hers…" _Don't cry, don't cry, don't cry. This is your fault. You were presumptuous and forgot your place and –_

Ren cut through her rising hysteria with, "You don't have to leave if you don't want to. My bad mood has nothing to do with you." _You didn't even have to say anything and you upset her. Excellent job. Obviously she'll leave, and you get to sit alone in your apartment wallowing in your misery knowing everything is your own damn fault. What are you, sixteen?_

Kyoko looked up from stuffing things into her backpack to see Ren removing his shoes with an expression very much akin to that of a sulking teenager.

"Tsuruga-san…?" She looked at him strangely. She was willing to believe that his irritation wasn't because of her. If it were, he wouldn't bother to deny it. He didn't bother to deny much of anything these days. But this slightly abashed, childish, pouty thing he had going on was odd. She didn't know if he'd always had this juvenile temper but had kept it well hidden from her until now, or if it was just another find he came up with after diving into his past for the sake of BJ, but he was showing it to her more and more often lately. She started to smile but then thought better of it.

She went to the kitchen and put the kettle on; Ren disappeared wordlessly down the hall to his bedroom. When he reemerged a few minutes later he was still dressed in his slacks and tight knit shirt, but all his other trappings were gone – the belt, necklace, scarf, rings, watch, even his socks. He looked simple. Gorgeous, but simple. He approached her where she stood by the stove and opened his mouth to explain something, but she handed him a cup of tea and steered him to his couch. As they sat, Ren noticed that she settled herself within arm's distance of him – not close enough to touch inadvertently, but definitely close enough to tempt him. He watched her uncertainly. She sipped her tea and after a few moments he did the same.

Finally, she asked him. "What happened?"

Ren grimaced at his tea. Its soothing influence, augmented in no small part by hers, was already working on him. He'd pushed his agitation far to the back of his mind and was unwilling to put it back on display for her. If he kept sipping this tea, and later got some quiet time with her on the drive back to her place, he would be able to sleep dreamlessly tonight. And that was all he wanted. "Nothing special," he lied.

"What are you angry about?"

"I'm not angry about anything, Mogami-san." He smiled a cool smile at her, not angry, but not genuine.

Kyoko settled her tea cup onto her lap and regarded him silently.

"Do you want me to be mad about something, Mogami-san?"

"No."

"Then I think you should be happy to hear me tell you that I'm not."

Her firm face flickered with something like hurt. "How can I be happy when you're lying to me, Tusuruga-san?"

Kuon's temper flashed. He disliked being called a liar, which was irrational, because he was indeed lying. But he also disliked hearing her call him "Tsuruga," which was even more irrational, because it was the only name she knew to call him by. Ren carefully placed his tea on the coffee table.

"Mogami-san – "

"You were so angry just a few minutes ago when you came home. It's impossible that you're not still angry. I can – I can accept the fact that you don't want to talk to me about it, even though I think it would help you, but please don't lie to me." She was watching the smooth surface of her tea, hands clasped around the cup, sitting proper as a princess but sad as a queen.

Kuon's temper flared hotter. _What the hell, is there no right answer? I'm angry and it upsets her, I tell her I'm fine and it upsets her. Why am I so useless when it comes to this girl?_ He sighed heavily in an attempt to get his anger under control, off of his face. It didn't work. "It was just a stupid work issue," he said. His voice was hard and cold and Kyoko looked at up him, startled.

"It must have been pretty serious to make you so – "

"It wasn't. It was stupid and trivial but jackasses like that piss me off to no end and I didn't feel like dealing with it tonight, okay?" His voice rose as he spoke. He practically shouted the last word at her.

Kyoko blinked at him. _That was… completely out of character. But that's good, right? It's good that he's breaking out of character_. "There was a jackass?"

She was only repeating him, but hearing her use vulgar words grated harshly. He stood up quickly and took a few steps from the couch. "Just some unprofessional moron who can't keep dates straight and thinks he's God Almighty because he's good looking and has a fanclub. Nothing I shouldn't be completely used to dealing with."

"Then why did he make you so angry?"

"Because he made trouble for me!" He flung an arm out as if gesturing at his inconvenience. "God dammit, I didn't even _care_ about that appearance and the idiot made it miserable because his damn ego is so big he couldn't move it out of the way and act like a professional! People who believe that their looks and popularity entitle them to more rights than others are about as low as criminals, you know that?" He had turned to face her with the most open expression of disdain, and his hands curled into angry shapes at his sides. "Criminals believe that they're better than everyone else too and that's why the rules don't apply to them." He sneered. "I'd love to see that hole thrown in with some of the guys I used to run with. They'd give him a whole new face to make the ladies scream."

Kyoko was shocked. Not in a million years would she have expected to hear such an acerbic tone or such scornful words coming from the mouth of Tsuruga Ren. But then she remembered – _This isn't "Tsuruga Ren". This is _him_, the man my senpai really is_ – and instantly her face cleared. _I want to know this man better. _"I can see why someone selfish like that would make you angry, but I do think you're overreacting a bit."

"Well add to him that pointless little idol. You know she actually _cried_ when I decided not to appear?"

"You decided that?"

"Yeah, I let that other idiot have the slot." He gestured dismissively. "What the hell do I care? I just wanted to get out of there before I blew up at somebody." He started pacing, hands shoved in pockets. "But this little blonde-haired tramp – I don't even know her _name_, she probably only appears in those cheap manga-to-TV dramas – this little tramp starts _crying_ because she wants _me_ to keep the show and make the other guy leave. Was she not listening that whole damn time? She was standing right there, what was she doing, thinking up ways to abuse the loyalty of her fans?" – his face clearly showed the regard he held for the idol and her fans – "I swear, all the teen idols are exactly the same and I can't stand a single one of them. They think putting on pretty clothes and having a camera pointed at them makes them _professional_." He stalked to his window and glared at the city beyond it. Kyoko half expected him to kick it, and the sudden image she had of him throwing a temper tantrum at the expense of his walls was so hysterical that she had to bring her teacup back to her mouth to keep from laughing. _Who would believe me if I told them Tsuruga Ren was really this childish? _It was a few sips before she could respond with an even voice.

"I know how you feel about professionalism. I probably would have been angry with her, too."

He looked back at her like she had just made the understatement of the year. "Oh, you would have ripped her apart. I would have _loved_ to see that." Kyoko very much wanted to doubt that she would rip the girl apart, but he knew her awfully well… At the very least, she couldn't doubt that he would have enjoyed watching. His expression brooked none of that. "But she wasn't even the worst," he continued. "This asshole of a comedian was there the whole time stirring up trouble. Yashiro-san probably could have gotten both that useless Iwake Jun or whatever his name was and the rock band – there was a band too, the musical guest or some crap, and they were completely refusing to accept their scheduled role on the program, kept complaining about how they wanted more air time, it's a late night talk show for God's sake, _nobody_ gets much air time! – but Yashiro-san could have worked with all of these guys if not for that infuriating comedian. He kept egging them all on, talking about image and industry rights and shit. I seriously wanted to strangle him. It's been a really long time since I've wanted to strangle a man, but between Iwake and the comedian I was ready to draw some blood."

Kyoko's composure faltered at the expression on his face. It was as obvious to her that he had wanted to hurt those men as it was that she truly had nothing to do with his anger. She wasn't used to dealing with violent people. Shoutaro had been a selfish prick but he was never violent. The only scary people Kyoko knew, other than Demon Lord Tsuruga, who was more likely to raze you with his hellish aura and bladelike words than to resort to a physical attack, were Cain Heel and BJ. But it was increasingly unclear to her how much of Cain nii-chan's and BJ's violence was their own, and how much was borrowed from… from whoever Tsuruga Ren _really_ was. She didn't know how to react to this dangerous man pacing across the room from her. Normally she would apologize, but none of this was her fault. He was scaring her and she had no idea what to do about it.

But then something registered – he was scaring _her_, but from what she could tell from his story, he had _not_ scared the people he was angry at. As frightening as his anger was, and as real as his bloodlust was, he hadn't acted on them. Otherwise how could he be here, at home, with her, with unbruised knuckles and unrumpled clothes? She had no cause to be scared of him; he was innocent.

"Then I'm proud of you," she said with a smile. "You contained your temper."

"Contained my temper?" He rounded on her, staring. "Is that what you call what I'm doing right now? Containing my temper? I'm yelling at you and you didn't even have anything to do with it!" He withdrew his hands from his pockets and balled them into tight fists. _How can she sit there and defend me when I'm shouting at her like this? She's this loyal and I can still take it out on her, every damn time_…

He was innocent, and now she had to make him see. Because he didn't see it himself. "But you didn't take it out on them," she told him.

"And taking it out on you is better? How is this better?" His voice rose to the breaking point and she realized, belatedly, that the person he was angriest with was himself. It broke her heart.

"Because I asked you."

"You…!" He started to shout again but paused. He had no idea how he felt about that explanation. "You asked me," he repeated, approaching her. "Did you… did you know I would yell at you? I mean, I'm sorry for yelling at you…" He sank onto the couch.

"I wanted to know what was wrong, Tsuruga-san. I wanted to help you. If yelling about it helps, I'm willing to listen. I know I'm not the person you're angry with."

"That's not an excuse," he leaned over his knees and covered his face in his hands. "Just because you don't mind doesn't give me the right to yell at you. I'm sorry."

"But you weren't yelling at me, Tsuruga-san. You were ranting. I'm sure you've listened to me rant plenty of times." He pulled a hand away from his face to look at her. She was smiling cheerfully at him. "Do you feel better now?"

He snorted. "No. Now I just feel like an ass."

"Eh?" she started in dismay. "Ehh? No, Tsuruga-san, really, you had every right to tell me how you were feeling! I asked you, so even if your feelings were angry, you can't be blamed for telling me them, right? And I knew you were angry, so I honestly didn't mind at all! In fact, I'm really happy that you opened up to me, but in the end it looks like I wasn't able help y– "

"You helped. I do feel better."

"Re-really?"

"Yes. I feel like an ass, but that's better than how I felt before."

She made a strange face at him, like she couldn't decide if she should be relieved or happy or still upset or what. It was an adorable face and it made him laugh. He stood up and took her teacup from her, setting it on the table beside his own.

"Come on," he said, offering her a hand, "I'll drive you home."

Her eyebrows were furrowed in confusion but she took his hand. He pulled her up and close to him, right into chest, and wrapped an arm loosely around her. He rested his hand on the small of her back – it was the lightest touch, just the tiniest pressure, but it had both of their hearts pounding – and bent his head to whisper to her.

"Thank you."

He dropped her hand and backed away before should could flip out, went to his room to collect his keys and scarf.

Kyoko was grateful for his disappearance as it gave her time to regain her composure. _Wh-what was that? Tsu-tsu-tsuruga-san sure is strange these days! Hah hah hah! B-but anyway, calm down, me! Now is not the time for this! If you wanted to get heart-poundingly nervous you should have done it when he was talking about strangling people, not now because he a little bit hu-hu-hug… IT WASN'T' A HUG!_ She went back to the dining room table where she finished arranging her things into her bag with shaky hands.

Ren, in his room, braced his hands against a wall and knocked his head against it. "You are such a moron," he told himself. _First I scare her with my face alone, then I lose my temper at her for things that have nothing to do with her, then I hug her when she calms me down.._. He walked into his closet, hunting for an extra scarf – he had not seen one belonging to Kyoko hanging on his coat rack. "I've got to get myself under control. I can't use the excuse of "Well, if she doesn't mind…" and let Kuon come out at her full force like that. It isn't fair to her. Kuon's capable of turning into a monster. And I definitely can't show that person in public, when I'm supposed to be Tsuruga Ren." He pulled a scarf off his belt rack, an especially long, wide one, and smiled at it tenderly. _It's so unfair. I'm a total amateur when it comes her, but no matter what I do she's an expert with me._

He returned to the main room to find Kyoko washing the teacups.

"Don't worry about that, I can take care of it later."

"It's no trouble! Teacups are easy to clean." She dumped the water from her cup, closed the faucet, and turned to him. "See? Done already."

Ren's heart ached at her smile; Kyoko's pounded at his.

_C-calm down, me! We've been over this already, you gotta keep calm, keep calm…_

"Shall we go, then?"

"Sure!"

She grabbed her backpack and moved to meet him on the landing. He wrapped the extra scarf around her neck as she reached for her coat. She jumped and turned a wide-eyed face at him, but he continued wrapping and tucking unperturbed. "It's quite cold out there, and I didn't see that you'd brought your own scarf."

"Th-thank you." She blushed softly and Ren fought the desire to reach out and stroke her pretty cheeks as strongly as he fought the desire to interpret that blush to his favor. _She's probably just embarrassed that she needed caring for_.

If Kyoko had been asked, she would have given that very excuse, but it wasn't true. She had no idea why she was blushing and she was completely unwilling to think about it. Just like she was unwilling to think about why Ren had embraced her earlier, or why it warmed her heart so much that he treated her like a confidant, or what it meant that she treated his home like her own, or the fact that she was there so often these days that almost every time he came home, he was coming home to her. Thoughts like these were dangerous; she didn't need her grudges to warn her of that.

The ride home was silent, as usual. Ren wasn't nearly as strict with his no-talking-in-the-car rule as he used to be, but it was still his preference to drive in silence and Kyoko didn't mind obliging him. He pulled up to the curb outside Daruma-Ya and turned to her with that same dangerous-for-cardiac-patients smile that had set her heart pounding once already tonight and roughly a bazillion times since she had first met him. _A little heart pounding is better than going into cardiac arrest like I used to, right? It's better than being completely blinded like before, right? I must be getting immune to it, hah hah hah…_ The fuzzy glow in her chest and the sparse population of grudges groaning like dying soldiers didn't really bespeak "immunity," but that was yet another thing that Kyoko didn't feel she had the courage to confront.

She decided to make a run for it before her legs melted and her safe little hypothesis could be completely blown out of the water. She put a hand on the door handle and said (without stuttering, for which she was very proud of herself), "Good night, Tsuruga-san!"

"Good night, Kyoko-chan."


	5. Connections

**A/N: A short chapter, in direct follow up to the end of chap 4, in which Kyoko is both providentially perspicacious and dense as rock. R&R plz!  
**

* * *

**Connections Made (Connections Missed (Connections Ignored Entirely))**

"Good night, Kyoko-chan," he had said, with a gentle face and a smile in his voice. _Kyoko-chan_. _Kyoko-chan_. She spent at least an hour that night trying to figure out why the way he said her name sounded so familiar (it seemed like a safer option than thinking about the fact that he had called her by her name at all). There were plenty of people who called her Kyoko-chan. Yashiro-san, Okami-san, the Ishibashi brothers. Heck, even Ren had called her Kyoko-chan that time when she was acting as his substitute manager and he got sick. But this time and that time were fundamentally different. For one, he wasn't sick this time. For another… well, they just _were_. Something about the quality to his voice, or maybe the way he elongated the "kyou." Her name rolled around in her mind until the voice speaking it had risen a full octave and a bell went off in her head game-show style.

"Corn!"

He had called her name the way Corn used to, like it was synonymous with wonderful things like birthday cake or warm spring days. She blushed.

"Corn…" And then something beautiful occurred to her. "He… Tsuruga-san is just like Corn!" The more she thought, the truer it rang. Both were amazing, magical creatures whose presence in her life was an unsought gift; both were beautiful beyond description; both deserved to have their greatness recognized by the world (Corn was a faerie prince who was destined to become King of Faeries; Tsuruga-san was the greatest actor in the world who was destined to dominate screens and hearts globe-wide); both were haunted by darkness that did not befit them. Kyoko had been just a girl when she knew Corn, and she had selfishly taken advantage of his kindness and empathy without doing anything to return them. She had often cursed herself for not taking better care of his precious feelings, for not seeing that he, also, was in need. But now she had a chance to redeem herself. Tsuruga-san was also an exquisite being upon whom she had the presumption to rely, but this time she was not so selfish and dependent. _This _time she would help him and be relied upon by him in return.

The realization made her giddy. Even a few months ago she would not have believed that insignificant little Kyoko could be of any assistance to the colossal power that was Tsuruga Ren. But now she knew that her own insignificance and need of him were exactly what made her useful. He already knew all her secrets, all her ugly truths, and he continued to help her; he could reveal to her anything he wanted and she would never hold it against him. And, being so low profile, she could move freely about him without anybody taking too much notice. (Kyoko was not nearly as "low-profile" an actress as she believed herself to be, but she wasn't yet the kind of major star who had paparazzi following her tail everywhere, so her logic remained sound.)

She crawled into bed and pulled the covers up to her chin, grinning like a school-girl. "That's decided then," she mumbled. "I couldn't do anything for Corn but I'll definitely always be there for Tsuruga-san," here she interrupted herself with a kitten yawn, "As long as he needs me, I'll do everything I can for him."

And with that she drifted off to sleep.


	6. Names Paradigms

**A/N: A chapter, longer than the last, in which there is progress, albeit small and trivial. Small and trivial but perhaps... monumentally important? Perhaps. **

**I have been wondering, as you may be, whether or not I'll ever introduce other characters into this story, or if it'll stay a (painfully) simple RenxKyoko. The answer? ...I'll let you know when I figure it out myself v.v**

**This chapter was intended to be completely from Ren's POV but a little bit of Kyoko snuck in... hum.  
**

* * *

**Names; Paradigms**

It was over a month before they saw each other again out of character. Filming for Cain Heel's movie took them up to the Sapporo area for more than three weeks, and right before that Kyoko had spent four straight days on the set of Box R creating enough buffer material that they could pull together fresh episodes while she was gone. ("Chagrin" did not begin to cover what Kyoko felt about having so inconvenienced the rest of the cast and crew, but evidently the President had made it abundantly clear to her director that it was _his_ whim that was taking Box R's most powerful character out of commission for the better part of a month, so nobody on set blamed Kyoko much.)

Filming went well. Cain and Setsu had a solid work relationship on top of their kinda creepy super-close sibling relationship, so there were no problems from a professional or a thespian standpoint. From a personal standpoint little could be said at all, problematic or otherwise. Both Kyoko and Ren kept strictly in character the entire time, and only the most astute student of body language could have read the tale of sexual tension and willful ignorance that unfolded silently between them.

It was a Monday night after a weekend spent completely apart – Cain and Setsu were hibernating and Ren and Kyoko hadn't had time for each other. Kyoko hummed happily to herself as she skipped out of the elevator onto Ren's floor. _God knows what he's been eating lately, but tonight we'll have udon!_

In an unusual reversal of roles, Ren was already home when Kyoko came skipping through his door.

"Okaerinasai," he called from the kitchen.

Kyoko blushed and smiled at her shoes, which had stopped skipping just long enough to be removed. _I'm not even Setsu and he spoils me, letting me think I'm coming home_. "Tadaima!"

She skipped into the kitchen and deposited her bag by the table before turning a critical eye on Ren and whatever he thought he was doing at the stove. She skipped up to him to see smooth green tea being poured into her favorite teacup.

"Here you go, Kyoko-chan." He handed her the cup wearing _that smile_ on his face.

Kyoko froze for a split-second but took the cup. "Thank you, Tsuruga-san."

He poured his own cup and started shuffling around in the spice cabinet.

"Tsuruga-san?"

Ren pulled a tall pepper grinder out and started shuffling around the spices behind it.

"Tsuruga-san?"

More shuffling.

"Tsu-ru-ga-san!"

Ren paused his movements, looked sidelong at her, continued shuffling.

Kyoko huffed, puffing her cheeks out like an angry chipmunk. She rushed at him, tugging at his arm. (It was a pleasant and, as far as Ren was concerned, entirely unpredictable side effect of their alternate life as the Heel siblings: when they were alone together, Kyoko touched him almost as comfortably, irritably, frequently as Setsu touched Cain. He loved it, and had therefore resolved to never call attention to it.) "Why are you ignoring me, Tsuru-"

He finally looked at her with that obnoxious, professional smile he used whenever he was teasing her but refused to admit it. "Ah, Kyoko-chan, is there something you need?"

"Y-you!"

"Is anything wrong, Kyoko-chan?"

"Tsu-tsuruga-san!"

"I guess not." He returned to the cabinet.

"Hey!" She tugged his arm down again, now so frustrated that tears were peeking from the corners of her eyes.

Ren observed this with surprise that did not surface to his face. Instead he turned to her, careful to not turn so much that she would lose her grip on his arm. They were standing so close that she had to tilt her face nearly straight up to be able to see his. From his current perspective Kyoko looked like a poster-child for the new cute. Her face was soft, her eyes wide and round, with a little pouting mouth and butterfly clips in her hair. She had on a longer skirt than usual (_Pity_) but it was flouncy and floral and made her look more like a woman than a girl, an effect enhanced by the powder blue cable-knit-sweater-clasped-with-one-large-button-at-the-neck-jacket-cape-thing she wore on top (Ren had _no _idea what such things were called – model though he was, he felt no need to keep up with women's trends), and the lace-collared blouse peeking from beneath it. _She's been dressing more fashionably lately_, he noted deliberately, in an attempt to distract himself from how cute she looked. It didn't work.

A breath passed between them before he remembered that she was very upset and he needed to say something to calm her.

"Think for a moment, Kyoko-chan," he said softly. "A girl I've fought with, laughed with, relied on for support, given advice to, a girl I eat dinner with on a regular basis, and have even lived with for weeks– " Kyoko opened her mouth in inevitable protest and he quickly added "_in character_. If there's a girl I'm this close to and who has seen so many of my bad sides – " Kyoko made to protest again but Ren didn't give her time " – there's no way I can continue accept such great respect from her. And there's no way I can continue to treat her formally, either. Think of something else to call me, Kyoko-chan, because so long as we're in this apartment, I have no intention of answering to the name "Tsuruga-san" again."

He returned his attention to the spice cabinet, although with noticeably less interest than earlier. A bead of sweat stood invisible on the side of his face that Kyoko could not see.

Kyoko, having dropped his arm, clasped her hands in front of her and looked down at them. Adorably. Ren had to force himself not to stare.

After a moment of awkward silence, she stammered, "Wh-what are you looking for, senpai?"

Ren checked a smile and peered deeper into the cabinet. "There are many senpais in the world, Kyoko-chan. Which one are you talking to?"

"Tsuruga-sen – "

"Wrong."

"But! But you said I only couldn't – "

"Let me rephrase. I have no intention of answering to the name "Tsuruga" while in this apartment."

She pouted at him. "You're being difficult on purpose, aren't you? Is this some new form of bullying?"

The previously checked smile came forcibly unchecked and his face split like a grade-schooler who just got away with a prank.

Kyoko blushed – _This is so unfair! He shouldn't be allowed to make that face when he's not playing Cain nii-chan! That face, and the puppy dog face, and the Emperor of the Night face should all be completely outlawed! _– and capitulated completely. Turning away from him she half-mumbled-half-whispered, "What are you looking for, Ren-senpai?"

"I'm sorry, what was that? I couldn't quite hear you." He turned his professional, no-I'm-not-teasing-you-Mogami-san smile on her and she met it with her patented liar-you-are-too-teasing-me-and-I-do-not-appreciate-it glare.

"What are you looking for?"

"Hmm?"

"Mumblerensenpaimumble."

"Hmmmmm?

"What are you looking for, Ren-senpai?" She shouted, practically panting with the effort.

Even viewed from the side, the smile that flooded his face was blinding and lit him all the way from his eyes to his voice. "Ah, that. I'd heard that vanilla is tasty in green tea and I thought I remembered you buying vanilla beans awhile back…"


	7. Half the Secret Stolen

**A/N: Here is the chapter that used to be chapter 3, now edited. And yes, I will be progressing with the storyline from here. But please don't ask me when. I just moved across the world and frankly have no idea what to expect out of any facet of my life, writing or otherwise, for at least the next month. Ummm... R&R if you have opinions on the edits?**

* * *

**Half The Secret Stolen**

It was on an evening warm with the breath of early summer, a clear night of inky blue and twinkling Cassiopeian lights, that she learned his biggest secret.

It had been two months since their schedules had been synchronized enough to permit an out-of-character dinner. When they weren't the Heel siblings, they were busy with their separate work. Ren was traveling around Thailand, Korea and Taiwan as part of a big-budget commercial deal; Kyoko landed a minor role in a movie and a dub-over job for a highly-anticipated American film in addition to her regular drama and Kimagure Rock (Bo was a role she was loath to quit, even though she was rapidly outgrowing it – she loved that chicken.) The result was that she had accumulated a mountain of homework that could have sounded the depths of the Mariana Trench, and had been chipping away at it diligently ever since she arrived Ren's apartment in midafternoon. She had just closed her English book with a heavy sigh and was reaching for her chemistry text when she glanced at the clock on the microwave and found that it was 7:30. Ren had said he'd be home around 8:00 and she hadn't even begun to think about dinner.

"Gah!" she shrieked, scrambling up from the low table. "Oh no oh no oh no Kyoko what have you done what if he gets home before dinner is ready Kyoko how can you be so irresponsible why can't you learn to balance your responsibilities like an adult this is why you're still just a kid and people have to worry about youuuuu!" She wailed in one long breath, rushing between refrigerator and cabinets like a Tasmanian devil. By the end of her outburst she was staring at the sum collection of useful ingredients currently in the apartment of Tsuruga Ren, arranged neatly along his kitchen countertop. He had half a daikon radish, some leftover fish, a head of nappa cabbage that was rapidly going bad, soy oil, mirin, about two table spoons of soy sauce, no rice, and a packet of miso-flavored instant ramen. She frowned at the lineup.

"Honestly, senpai. Never mind the soy sauce, how do you have _no rice _in your house? Are you really a Japanese person? And that instant ramen packet – I hope you just so happened to buy one package, and that it's not the last one out of a whole box or something. If you've been eating instant ramen for dinner like it's a viable food option, _again_, after I told you _so many times_ that it isn't…" A menacing aura collected like storm clouds above her head.

"But Mogami-san, I don't know how to cook," he had told her many months ago, on fending off yet another of her actors-must-eat-nutritious-meals lectures. "I've tried. I even bought a cookbook."

"The act of purchasing a cookbook does not constitute trying to cook," she had scowled.

"But I did try. I even held the cookbook while cooking."

She had eyed him suspiciously.

"Mogami-san, I burned the rice water."

"Lots of people burn rice the first time they make it, Tsuruga-san, that's not an excuse to – "

"No, Mogami-san, I burned the rice _water_. I burned the water I was going to put the rice in."

"E-excuse me?"

"It's true."

"Tsuruga-san, don't you have a rice cooker?"

"Yes."

"… Tsuruga-san, were you aware that you're supposed to put the rice and the water into the rice cooker at the same time?"

He had regarded her with no small surprise. "But doesn't the water already have to be boiling in order to cook the rice?"

That was when she had decided that he was truly hopeless and that she would simply have to cook for him as often as physically possible. Every night, ideally. (That had also been when she accepted the key to his apartment; that was when Ren decided never to learn to cook.)

"Ah!" Kyoko perked up. Her vengeful reminiscing had reminded her of something useful. "That's right! Tsuruga-san has a cookbook! Maybe I can find some ideas in there…" She trailed into his bedroom. This was not typically a place she entered but it was the only place he kept his books. He wasn't much of a reader, unless the literature in question was broken into lines of dialogue and screen direction.

Kyoko grew nervous as she crossed the threshold. "It's only to get the cookbook," she told herself. "He won't be angry and I won't look at anything else." She tiptoed to the bookcase by the light of the kitchen, not turning any of the bedroom lights, careful to keep her eyes only on her goal. "I'm just ging to get the cookbook…" She reached a hand toward the shiny, untouched cover, made contact, "And get out of here!" She snatched the book of the shelf and made for the door.

Unfortunately, the book had been sitting so long unused on the shelf that it had developed close bonds with the neighboring books, bonds it valued and was willing to fight for. The cookbook clung fervently to the paperback to its right, having become especially attached to its glossy paperboard cover, and when Kyoko insensitively ripped it from its shelf, the cookbook, in a last ditch display of loyalty, tried to take the paperback along with it. The paperback got as far as the edge of the bookshelf before cruel physics shoved its gravitational fingers between them and the paperback clattered to the floor.

Kyoko shrieked, hands flying to her face in what would have been quite an accurate impression of Edvard Munch's _Scream _if not for the fact that there was a cookbook wedged between hand and cheek on the right side.

She couldn't properly assess the damage using only the kitchen light which came through the doorway, so she was forced to turn on Ren's bedroom light.

"He's going to kill meeeeeee," she wailed, and as she knelt before the fallen book her entire face began to dissolve into tears of remorse and preemptive apology. Gingerly, she lifted the splayed volume from the floor, grasping it by the spine and smoothing the pages. It was an English book with a long a title she couldn't quite make out, although she recognized the author – Mark Twain. The pages were dog-eared, like it had been read many times over many years, and she hoped he wouldn't notice a few new creases in the pages.

Suddenly, like the quiet flutter of the first snowflake of a new blizzard, a photograph slipped from between the final page and the back cover. It landed face up on the wood floor and Kyoko, reaching to collect it, froze as though hit by a sheet of ice water.

It was a photograph of three people, two adults and a child between them. On the left was Hizuri Kuu, Kyoko's beloved sensei-cum-father. He was much younger but his wide grin was as incorrigible as she remembered. On the right was a sublimely beautiful American woman with hair the color of yellow amber falling in smooth waves past her shoulders. Kyoko had never seen her before but knew instinctively that this was Sensei's lovely, beloved Juli. They seemed symmetrical, like complementary halves of the same whole.

It was the figure between them that froze her. He was younger than he had been when she met him, shorter, with rounder cheeks, but he was undeniable. The slim length of his limbs, the bright gold of his hair, the soft smile on his features. It was Corn. Even in the photograph, he glowed like a creature borrowed from another realm. Sensei and Juli had their arms twined about him and each other and the love between them was so clear and warm that it brought tears to her eyes. Here was Corn with his parents, before everything had gone wrong and he had grown to despise the heavy hand of his father. When he was just a boy who cherished and was cherished. A boy who was the perfect average of his parents – his father's build but with his mother's delicacy, his father's face but with his mother's coloring. He was Father and Juli's son. Hizuri Kuon.

And it all fell into place.

Kyoko's hands shook as she replaced the photograph between the final page and back cover of the book, restored the book to its shelf, flicked off the lights, returned to the kitchen. Her stomach fluttered while examining the cookbook and she held onto herself with one arm while stirring the pan of makeshift dinner. She moved quietly, sparely, eyes placed carefully on one thing at a time.

Finally she rested the wooden spoon against the edge of the pan, looked up into the zero space between herself and the kitchen wall.

"I won't say anything," she said to space. "I don't know what happened, but I know that Ren-senpai will tell me if he wants me to know. Whatever made them separate, Father definitely still loves his son, so it will all be alright in the end." She looked back at the pan of food, stirred it again to keep the fish from sticking. "Until Ren-senpai tells me what happened to Hizuri Kuon, I will never mention it," she whispered.

Ren, the king of timeliness, got home just as Kyoko was dishing up her impromptu daikon-and-mirin-sauce salad.

"Tadaima," he called.

"Okaerinasai!" she called back to him, with a clear voice and a smile on her face.

**Ed 5.26.11**


	8. A Drama of Destiny and Secrets

H-hey guys. Long time know see... I've, uh, I've got a new chapter up. It's really long. Um, sorry for the wait? Heh heh heh... I promise, the next two chapters are _totally written already_, I just have to edit them...

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**A Drama of Destiny and Secrets  
**

It was 7 o'clock on a Wednesday evening in early fall and the smell of hamburgers was slowly permeating the hallway of a certain upscale, one-apartment-per-floor condominium in one of the more posh sections of Tokyo. Filming for Black Jack had finally wrapped a week earlier and Ren was looking forward to his first non-character dinner with Kyoko in a long while. He exited the elevator smiling, encountered the smell, and stalled in greeting. The aroma of western food, especially heavy western food, was not a common one in his life. Kyoko usually cooked to accommodate his tastes – simple food, clean on the palate and light in the stomach. The prospect of a heavy beef meal was not a particularly attractive one to him. But he had pleasant memories (of Kyoko, her smile, her childlike enthusiasm) associated with hamburgers, and so it was with a happy little sense of anticipation that he opened his door and walked into her culinary presence.

He called his greeting while removing his shoes, and Kyoko appeared, leaning at a steep angle around the kitchen wall with an apron tied in a neat little bow at her neck and a ladle visible in one hand. She gave him a relaxed smile – "Welcome home!" – and disappeared again into the sounds of cooking.

Ren smiled broadly at the sliver of space she had occupied. A few months ago, she would have dropped her activities to greet him formally at the door. He fantasized about – and quickly quashed any ideas about –slipping in silently, sneaking up behind her, surprising her with a kiss. Tempting himself did him no good, after all. He joined her in the kitchen (silently, sneakily, but that was just the way he walked, carefully, like a ninja, like his father had taught him, not because he was going to –) and poked her in the side before he could tell himself not to.

She shrieked, dropped the ladle into the pan, and swung around with a right hook that he _knew_ carried more force than it looked like it did. He caught her fist reflexively, and then noticed her face, which was fixed in a murderous sort of expression that he imagined she might show to a molester or a pickpocket. She looked not a little like a namahage. So thinking, Ren suddenly bent over the arm that was still attached to her fist and used his free hand to cover a face split with laughter.

"You – " he gasped between laughs, "actresses shouldn't – " more laugher, "no, girls shouldn't – "

"Wh – you – why – you _poked_ me!"

Ren laughed harder.

"Gi-give me my hand back!"

"The ladle – " Laughter.

"You – Ren-senpai, you're such a – Augh! Stop squeezing my hand, you overgrown 12-year-old!"

"The ladle – " More laughter.

"What about the ladle?"

Ren straightened suddenly and addressed her with a very grave demeanor. "If I were really a molester, the ladle would have been a much more effective weapon."

Kyoko's already blushing face went entirely red and she struggled with renewed energy against his grip on her fist. "I – I really will use it if you don't let go, you middle school student!"

His face crinkled up, preparing to laugh again, but instead he dropped her hand and assumed an aloof air. "Middle school? Well, I suppose that's an improvement over 12-year-old. You've certainly grown presumptuous recently, Mogami-san." He slipped a dangerous glint into his eyes.

Kyoko, true to character, cringed back against the stove. "I'm sorry – I didn't – eep!"

He advanced at her until she was completely within his range, her eyes closed tightly like a mouse's, cowering in his shadow. There was no hope of escape for her, and she knew it. He placed one hand on the counter to her left, reached slowly and with looming movements around to the other side of her – she curled tighter at the soft sounds and her head brushed against his chest – took the ladle from the pan, tasted the sauce on it, and smiled pleasantly.

"Ah, this is quite good. I was a little worried that it would be heavy, but it's not too – "

"Y-Y-Y-YOU!" She placed wide-palmed hands against his chest and shoved him backwards. He allowed himself to be pushed and observed with unabashed amusement the righteous indignation which played across her face. She plucked the ladle from his hand and gestured at him angrily with it. "Out of the kitchen! Out!"

He considered silently that she should be grateful that he had licked the ladle clean before she started waving it all over the place, but decided that stating as much out loud would probably be a bad idea. She corralled him out of the kitchen, grunted at him with a threatening sort of finality, and went back to the stove.

He quirked an eyebrow at her – a gesture which raised one side of his grin in a most endearing, boyish (Hizuri Kuu-ish) fashion – and leaned against the doorframe.

"So what are we celebrating, anyway?"

She rounded on him. "Out of – "

"I'm not in the kitchen."

"We're not – "

"You're making hamburg steak with egg, right?"

"How do you – "

"There are eggs on the counter." He jutted his chin at the evidence.

She glowered.

"So? You don't expect me to believe that you're making your favorite, extremely high-calorie meal for no good reason, do you?"

She mumbled.

"What's the occasion?"

She mumbled again.

"I'm sorry, what was that?"

"Hold on a minute, I can't tell you while I'm still annoyed with you!" She shouted this time, then whirled back to the pan.

Ren, with great effort, did not laugh. Kyoko slid the hamburg-and-sauce onto a platter, turned the burner off, and placed the pan back on it.

And then she turned back to him with sparkles shooting out of her eyes in all directions and a smile that took up three quarters of her face.

"I got a new drama role!"

As always happened when she gifted him a piece of her genuine happiness, Ren found that he could not return her enthusiasm. He just melted in her warmth. His mouth curved into the smile that was hers and hers alone. "That's wonderful," he said quietly. "What kind of role?"

Kyoko veritably danced to the pot rack and plucked with fairy fingers a new, small pan. "I'm the female lead~" she sang, "in a drama about destiny and secrets!" She pirouetted back to the stove.

His heart throbbed. At that moment he wanted nothing more than to watch her forever as she was right now, seventeen and beautiful and dancing rapturously around his kitchen. He leaned his head against the doorframe. "Sounds perfect," he said. "Is there magic?"

"No, no magic. The story is about a girl who leads a twisted double life. On the surface she's a happy young woman who just graduated from high school and got a job teaching at the ballet studio she's studied at since childhood. She has a wonderful boyfriend and she's training to become a professional ballerina." She cracked an egg into the pan and raised her voice above the frying sound. "But actually, she's a troubled girl with strong ties to the yakuza. She's got a boyfriend there too, and they've been together since middle school. She sneaks out at night and helps run her yakuza boyfriend's gang's gambling ring. She's very graceful and agile, so sometimes they make her take out their enemies in back alleys and stuff."

Ren's expression had been widening throughout her narrative and finally he had to ask, "What made you take this role?" She had already mentioned about fifty things he would have thought would be deal-breakers for her – not the least of which was the fact that she was portraying two simultaneous romances. He made quite sure, however, that his voice contained all curiosity and no incredulity; it wouldn't do to make her think he disapproved.

"Because she's so complicated! She really likes her surface life, and she cares about that boyfriend, but she can't leave behind her seedy life of crime and immorality! It's like she's her own evil twin! But she's not crazy or anything, and she has horrible guilt about all her lies – her yakuza boyfriend doesn't know about her ballet boyfriend – "

"Is her other boyfriend a ballerina?"

"They're called ballerinos when they're boys, and yes, he is, and her yakuza boyfriend can't know about him because he'd probably break his legs even though he knows that she has to keep up a civilian cover because she's not fully yakuza, but she really does care about her ballet boyfriend, so her yakuza boyfriend would honestly have every right to be angry, so she has to keep everyone in the dark about everyone else, and it's very difficult but it's an exciting life and she actually enjoys the adrenaline rush she gets every day just by walking out the door, and it even makes her a better dancer and – "

"Kyoko-chan."

"Eh?"

"Slow down, please."

Kyoko flushed and dished the fried eggs onto the burgers. It was a legitimate request. In her excitement, she'd been rapid-fire babbling with only the most minimal pauses necessary for breathing. "Sorry," she mumbled. "I just think she'll be really fun to portray." Ren entered the kitchen then and picked up a bowl of steamed carrots that she had evidently prepared before he got home. She looked up at him with a shine in her eyes and a soft apple-blush on her cheeks, and for a moment he literally forgot what he was doing. "I've never played a character like her before," she continued. "I'm fascinated by her."

He followed her into the dining room at a deliberately safe distance, two paces behind , far enough that he couldn't touch her just by reaching out an arm.

They settled the foodstuffs onto the table, which Kyoko had already set, again evidently before he got home. "And anyway," she picked up again, "eventually all her lies catch up with her, so I don't feel too bad about portraying a criminal."

"Oh? What happens to her in the end?" He asked because he was legitimately interested – any character that interested her perforce interested him – and also because it might distract him from how badly he wanted to touch her at that moment.

Kyoko furrowed her brow. "The director says he's leaving that up in the air for a while. He says it depends on the actors' chemistry. The scriptwriters were at the meeting today, and they discussed a few options – maybe she'll get caught during a police raid and go to jail with her yakuza boyfriend, or maybe the yakuza will find out about her ballet life and hurt the other people she loves, or maybe she'll decide to stay with her ballerino and turn in her yakuza boyfriend. I think the director wants to wait and see how she interacts with both of the male leads."

Ren finished dishing carrots onto his plate of hamburg steak and egg and looked up at her. She had ended on a curious note, as though she were dissatisfied with the untied ends. As though the situation were problematic somehow. Personally, Ren thought it sounded like tremendous amounts of fun, even if he wasn't over-the-moon-happy about her having _two _on-set love interests.

"Kyoko-chan? What's the matter? Is that a problem?"

She looked up suddenly, evidently unaware that her troubles were evident in her voice. Or at least like she hadn't expected him to pick up on it. "What? Oh, no, of course not! It'll be very exciting to find out at the end what exactly happens to her, and it really fits her character to have that kind of suspense! It's not a problem at all!"

Ren narrowed his eyes. She wasn't lying, but… "Then what _is_ the problem?"

Her face went stiff and she waved her hands around in unnecessarily large gestures. "Problem? There's no problem! How could I possibly have a problem? I've landed a lead role in a drama, what could I possibly be upset about? No, no, no, no, no problem at all! Ahahaha!"

Ren's eyes turned to slits. "I see," he said, picking up his plate. "Thank you for the food. I'll eat in my room."

"N-NO! Nonononono, don't do that, I'll – " she rushed around his retreating back and placed both palms against his chest for the second time that night. Ren did not deny to himself how wonderful that made him feel, but he did keep it off his face. She pushed him back towards the dining room. "It's really not that big of a deal, and I'm really not worried about the end of the script," she backed him into a chair, "and I know I shouldn't be complaining about anything I'm just a little concerned," took his plate from his hands," but it's not a big problem," settled it on the table, "but I'll tell you about it if you really want to know," swiveled his shoulders towards his food. Ren let the rest of his body follow, and she moved in a compact whirlwind to her own seat, took fork and knife in hand, and looked at him expectantly.

He laughed softly. "I really want to know."

She sighed. Dramatically. Cut a piece of hamburg steak and egg. "It's honestly not a big deal." Popped it into her mouth.

"I'd still like to know."

"It's just that… well, I don't know ballet."

He hummed a question.

"So I'm going to have to take lessons in order to be able to play the part…"

"That doesn't sound like a problem. You've never been averse to learning something new for a part before." His mind flashed back to the intensive model-walk session when she was creating Natsu, and to the time he caught her sneaking a cigarette from his pack when she was still getting used to Setsuka.

"Oh, no it's not the fact that I have to take lessons! I'm really excited for that! Ballet is such a princess-like thing to know!" He smiled at this. "The problem – and it's not really a _problem_ – it's just that, I'm going to have to learn very quickly, which requires a lot of practice, and I don't, um, I don't… really... have… anywhere to do it."

He hummed again, rather more questioningly than last time. "Surely you can practice at the studio…?"

"That's the thing – I'll be studying right at LME, but I have to go at an accelerated pace, so I can't take a normal class. I'll have a special ballet tutor guiding me, and our sessions are already scheduled to take all the extra time that the dance studios aren't taken by the regular classes. I can't do any extra practice there. I could practice at home, but it won't be as useful without a ballet bar and a mirror wall." She looked veritably heartbroken.

He smiled indulgently. _This_ was exactly the kind of thing he'd expect her to get all worked up over. The idea of doing something by halves was contrary to her very nature, and the fact that it was a cultured, lady-like, reminiscent-of-royalty activity such as ballet that she was condemned to give only a portion of her eager dedication to – well, that was like taking her nature and a strip of shark skin and moving them contrarily against each other. And she would never think of the obvious solution which was, "Why don't you just practice here?"

She looked up at him with precisely the egregious amount of wide-eyed surprise that he had expected. "My exercise room already has a mirror wall, and it wouldn't be any issue for me to move a few machines around to make extra space."

"Oh, no, that isn't – "

"Which is actually something I'd been meaning to do anyway, so I can practice aikido in there as well."

"You're practicing aikido? Is it for a role?"

"And you're here all the time anyway."

"Y-yes, but – "

"I'd have to get a ballet bar installed, but that should be simple enough."

"No, no! I couldn't possibly – "

"I would let you pay me back for it when your check comes in for the role," he lied.

She considered for a moment, swirling her carrots around in the hamburg sauce. Finally, she said, "Thank you," and then, "Why are you practicing aikido? Do you have a new role?"

"Hmm? No, I've kept it up since I started preparing for BJ. I've been practicing early in the morning down in the courtyard, but it'll be getting cold again soon and I thought it might be time to move my practices indoors."

"I didn't know you still did that… from back then." This fact seemed to bother her.

Which fact pleased him immensely. "You don't spend the night very often anymore, so I guess you wouldn't know."

She blushed profusely. "Of course I don't! That's not – " Ren was very interested to know what it was not, and how it related to her no longer staying the night, but Kyoko apparently thought better of whatever she was going to say. She finished eating quickly and huffed into the kitchen to start on the dishes.

Ren pulled his cell phone from his pocket, flipped it open, and hit Yashiro's number on speed dial. He hadn't the first clue as to how one would go about getting a ballet bar installed in one's home exercise room, but he could trust Yashiro to find out. It then occurred to him that Kyoko might be embarrassed if she heard him talking about it to somebody – she didn't even know that Yashiro knew how much time she spent at his house; Ren had most solemnly threatened the deepest psychological torture if Yashiro ever so much as waggled his eyebrows in her presence – and snapped his phone shut. He followed Kyoko into the kitchen and took over the dishes while she prepared a boxed lunch for herself with the leftovers.

Yashiro had been lying comfortably in bed with gloves on his hands and his laptop on a little tray table when his phone rang once, the screen flashed bright with Ren's name, and then abruptly went dark and silent. He frowned, but figured that if Ren really needed him he'd call back. But he didn't, and by the time he got to Ren's apartment the following morning Yashiro was more than a little curious. Maybe it was just a misdial? Ren never misdialed.

"That was cruel of you, Ren," he complained, settling onto the couch.

Ren, taking the armchair opposite, blinked at him. "I'm sorry?"

"You called me last night but then hung up after only one ring! I was so curious about what you could possibly have wanted that I nearly couldn't sleep!"

"It seems you slept just fine regardless. And you could have called me back if you really wanted to know."

"Of course I couldn't. Whatever it was you decided you didn't actually want to talk about, there was no way I'd get you to reverse your decision over the phone."

"And you think you'll have better luck in person?"

"Obviously. In person I can always threaten to break your appliances." He wiggled gloveless fingers menacingly.

"That won't be necessary. I called you impulsively but then decided the timing was inconvenient since she might have been embarrassed. That's why I hung up. But I still need to talk to you about it. I have a favor to ask, actually."

Yashiro made a mental attempt to shake a stick at all the things about that statement which surprised him (the admission to impulsive behavior; the total absence of a fight about talking about why he'd called; the open request for assistance; the tacit admission that Kyoko-chan had been at his house the previous evening; the fact that, whatever it was, it involved Kyoko-chan in a way that she might find embarrassing), found that there were too many, and instead raised his eyebrows. "Oh?"

"I need you to help me get a ballet bar installed in my exercise room. Within the week if possible."

Yashiro gaped at him.

"Kyoko-chan is learning ballet for a new role and she has nowhere to practice, so I said she could practice here. But it seems she needs a ballet bar to really train effectively."

Yashiro reached the limit of his credulity. He thrust a finger in Ren's direction and spluttered for a moment before managing to screech, "Who are you and what have you done with my client?"

Ren's face immediately fell. "I'm sorry, I assumed I could count on my manager to help me with a personal project. It seems I'm mistaken. Please disregard my request, since it obviously makes you uncomfortable. You don't need to concern yourself with anything other than my career." He rose from his chair and stalked into the kitchen, embarrassed and a little resentful. _Why does Yashiro-san always have to make things more difficult?_

When he reentered his living room roughly thirty seconds later with a cup of instant coffee in his hand, he found Yashiro perched at the edge of the couch with his laptop on the coffee table and his cell phone trapped between ear and shoulder, scrolling purposefully about the touchpad with one hand while the other held the little black book Ren recognized as his professional planner.

"Your first commitment tomorrow isn't until 11:30, so if I can get an appointment for early, maybe we can – Ah, yes, hello? Yes, thank you, I'm interested in having a ballet bar installed in a private home. Can I get a price quote? And what would be the earliest I could schedule an appointment?" He produced a pen from an interior pocket and started scribbling things in the margins of the notebook.

Ren smiled a little, placed the cup on the table, and returned to the kitchen for milk – Yashiro didn't take his coffee black.

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...I hope that ending isn't too abrupt. Or too OOC for Ren... It could probably use another day to stew, I'm just afraid that if I don't get this chapter up now it'll be another few months before I do it. If you like, please let me know what you think, and I'll have another chapter up before the end of the weekend.


	9. However Long A While Is

Chapter 9, only slightly later than promised.

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**However Long A While Is**

When Kyoko next made it to Ren's place two nights later, she found him waiting for her with the most smug look on his face. She narrowed her eyes.

"What?"

He smiled, looking honestly pleased, but still very smug. "I have something to show you," he said.

She approached him warily.

His face broke into a child's grin. "Come on," he said, and led the way to the exercise room.

He opened the door and preceded her in, his body blocking most of her view, then stepped aside to let her see what it was that he wanted to show her. She saw, and in that moment everything changed. She laid eyes on the ballet bar and saw Ren's unabashed excitement, happiness, pride reflected in the wall of mirrors, and she knew her cause to be lost. She had scrambled by her fingernails back up that slippery cliff more than once before, but this time she fell so fast, so hard, so deep, that there could be no climbing back out. She loved him.

How could she possibly not? He was everything she admired, everything she aspired to be – competent, reliable, wise, phenomenally talented – she could have worshipped him forever for those things alone. But he was also a lost and lonely creature who needed her care. And an irresponsible boy who could not be counted on to even eat properly without supervision. And a complicated man who hid nothing of his heart from her although she knew it made him nervous, to bare his flaws like that. He understood her, was kind to her, forgave her, teased her, gave generously to her, and was standing right behind her, smiling to steal her heart, happy at just the prospect of her happiness. How could she possibly not love this man?

She wanted to cry.

And she wanted him to know how happy he made her.

She gaped for a moment, just barely long enough to recover herself, not quite too long to be appropriate for shock – because honestly, who got a ballet bar installed in his own home within 48 hours of his silly kohai complaining about the logistical problems created by her latest role? – then spun to him with an expression of unadulterated glee.

"Ohmygoodness thank you so muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch!" she sang, and commenced pirouetting, pliéing, leaping, dancing and generally sparkling all over the new bar.

"I'm glad you like it," she heard him say, and just from the tone she knew what kind of face he was making. It was not one she believed herself capable of resisting anymore; she really might melt if she had to look at that angelic smile. She couldn't turn to face him. She couldn't look at the mirrors – even the mere _reflection_ of that smile would have been too much. So instead she launched into a series of spins that ended with her on her back as the entire room rotated around her, and Ren laughing as he extended a hand to help her up. (That laughing face was gorgeous too, and it undoubtedly would have set her heart pounding had it not already been doing so due to the exercise.)

(Later, she would recognize that night as the moment she became a true actress: it was when she mastered the skill of showing just a fraction of what she truly felt, of keeping the unnecessary emotions locked inside her heart while sharing with the world the ones they wanted to see. Her whole body had been aching from a Molotov cocktail of feelings, but all he saw was the joy.)

She quickly changed into her workout clothes and started practicing. Ren ordered delivery Indian, forced her to pause for half an hour to eat and digest, then convinced her to shower at his place when she'd danced herself into an exhausted and sweaty mess, and drove her home.

He smiled softly at her as she left his car – "Good night, Kyoko-chan," and Kyoko smiled back with all the happiness she felt – "Good-night, Ren-senpai!" – before skipping to her door.

She smiled on her way up the stairs, careful not to wake the shop owners, then sobbed silently into her pillow until she fell asleep.

As time passed, she found loving him to be easier than she had expected. She knew and accepted that he would never return her feelings. She knew that someday he would get a girlfriend – there was still that high school girl he was in love with, though she hadn't heard anything about her in a while – and that when that happened he would break her heart. But it was all right. He was kind to her right now, and she wasn't expecting anything from him. Even when he finally hurt her she would never hate him, and as long as she never hated him the world would be okay.

Being in love with him also made it easier to pretend she didn't know anything more than he had told her about his past. After she'd found out that he was Hizuri Kuon _and_ her Fairy Prince Corn, she'd been accosted by a whole range of tender emotions suddenly doubling in intensity. It had been very difficult to mask. Even before she found out, he'd already occupied a dangerously enormous space in her heart, but she'd been carrying out a reasonably effective campaign against herself, convincing herself that her feelings were stupid and baseless, should have no effect on how she treated him and, really, shouldn't exist at all. But then suddenly he was "Kuon," and all the resonance she felt with Ren was so much harder to ignore. He was "Corn," and she just couldn't discount the adoration and compassion she felt for him. She'd begun to fear she might become overwhelmed.

Now, though, she _was_ overwhelmed, and things seemed clearer. She knew that what she felt wasn't because he was "Kuon" or "Corn." She loved him because he was himself. Even if she _didn't_ know of those other identities, they would still have been there, in his smiles and his kindness and his sadness, and she would still have loved him for all of it. She felt now that there were no secrets she had to ignore; there was just one man she was in love with, and all she had to do was not show it. As a capable actress but a horrible liar, she found the latter much easier.

After a few weeks, she decided that none of it really mattered anyway– who he was, who he had been, who his parents were, and even the fact that she was in love with him – none of it mattered. All that mattered was that she had the right to be near him for a while, and for that while, however long it lasted, she was the happiest girl in the world.

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**AN:**

In response to kr: I admit I don't know much about aikido, but I read an autobiography once that focused on it, and I thought I remembered there being forms to practice. My intention with Ren practicing aikido was that he was practicing stretches, rolls, forms and the ilk. My memory is that aikido is more bad*ss than your standard issue karate, so I thought it would be more fitting for BJ preparation. But if my facts are wrong or too stretched, could you please suggest a replacement martial art? Thank you :)

In response to all others who leave me non-signed-in reviews: Thank you very much :) Reviews always make me happy ^_^

Now, question. I notice a few people seem interested in knowing about Kyoko's new drama. I hadn't intended to write anything more about it, and quite frankly, the probability of me ever writing the whole story is slim to none (simply because I have too many other projects already in the works, not because of a lack of interest). My question is, though, do you think the current story would be improved by me including a bit about filming of drama? If the votes are heavily in favor, it may take me a bit longer to update again, as I'll have to shift my storyboards a bit. If the votes are not heavily in favor, this hulking brute of a fic is pretty close to wrapping up.

Thank you to everyone for your comments and input! It is very much appreciated :)


	10. The End

_I give you the last two chapters, up at last!_

* * *

**The End**

They'd had a dinner date that night. Well. They had had dinner with the crew of a commercial they'd shot together (promoting awareness and support of battered women – Kyoko had jumped on the offer like an angry mother bear). But all the male crew, after having doted on Kyoko for pretty much the entire shoot, threw in the towel and left her to Ren when he sat down next to her with his bento. He counted this as a victory, and, given the way everyone skirted around them with jealousy that only differed in the degree of its obviousness, at least halfway to a date.

Kyoko, he had noticed, had been careful to divide her attention equally between himself and Yashiro, on the other side of her, which he also counted as a victory. It meant she was conscious of herself around him. A step in the right direction. (He, on the other hand, had been fighting to _stay_conscious of himself. His looks were not something he was used to worrying about; he knew he could level a woman with a smile the same way a World Series pitcher knew he could throw a ball at 100 mph straight through a batter's strike zone: through practice and plenty of real-world experience. He knew what he looked like at all times because he was doing it on purpose. The fact that Kyoko incapacitated his what-do-I-look-like filter, rendering him little more than an infatuated, overwhelmed, barely-out-of-his-teens idiot of a boy in love, was, he agreed with his manager, a step in the _wrong_ direction. Oh well.)

She returned to his apartment with him because she'd left some scripts there, and because she wanted to practice a bit more for her shoot the following day – they were filming a big dance scene and Kyoko didn't feel like she'd prepared well enough yet. Which was to say, so far she'd only put in about 110%.

He opened the door for her and she walked right in, with no fuss at all. He smiled. They stood in the landing together removing their shoes, he snapped on the lights, and they called "I'm home!" in perfect simultaneity. Kyoko laughed – a sound that reminded him of glass wind chimes in a sea breeze – and they welcomed each other home in harmony. Kyoko went straight for the sofa, gathering a script from the coffee table and settling in with her legs curled under her like one of those slim, elegant cream-and-black cats that always reminded him of royalty. He couldn't think of what they were called at the moment – named after some Southeast Asian country or something – but tried to remember, as it provided a decent distraction from how good she looked in a sky-blue sweater dress and ivory knit stockings, all cuddled into his couch.

He plopped down near her, threw a foot up on the coffee table, stretched an arm across the couch behind her head, closed his eyes and tried to sigh the day's exhaustion away. After a moment he cracked a lid at her, curious for her reaction, and found her with a brow cocked in his direction. She bounced her shoulders in a shrug so minute it might have just been a stretch and returned to her script. It occurred to him that maybe she was surprised at his behavior; maybe she'd been expecting him to sit down slowly, with straight back and crossed legs, reach for the TV remote. That's what Tsuruga Ren would have done. He frowned.

Suddenly she was looking at him again, with a frown to match his. "Senpai? Is anything wrong? Do you need anything? Should I – " she started to rise but he stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.

"Nothing, nothing," he said. "Just a bit of a headache."

Her frown deepened. "A headache? Where? In the temples? The forehead? The base of the neck?"

His frown moved to match hers now. He'd been lying. He had no headache. "Why does it matter where it hurts? Don't worry, it's just a little ache anyway." He smiled at her, but somehow felt horribly guilty.

Kyoko performed a little leap on the couch cushions that he was pretty sure had to be rocket assisted – she went straight up, pivoted 90 degrees, and landed facing him. "It does matter, senpai! If it's in the base of the neck then it's probably a tension headache, which can be quite debilitating if allowed to grow out of control, so you need to drink lots of water _now_ and get a good massage. If it's in the temples then you can squeeze right here, between your thumb and forefinger," she demonstrated, "and if it's in the forehead then – "

He cut her off with a soft laugh and pat on the head. "It's gone already," he said. "I think you scared it away." Her mouth hung open a little bit while she tried to figure out if she should be pleased or upset about this, but before she could work herself into a tizzy he changed topics. Nodding towards the script still in her lap, he asked, "How's filming going? You said the script would be determined as filming progressed. Have there been any interesting developments?"

She beamed at him.

He let his face melt into the smile that was especially hers and watched her gestures as she spoke. She was so relaxed with him these days, he had begun to worry that his heart might burst from happiness. Or that his body might just completely dissolve into a puddle, topped by a jiggling blob of green goo, his brain, as it inevitably felt when she smiled at him like that. He'd never known a man could feel this way about a woman.

He'd considered it before, but he thought again that if he weren't so hopelessly infatuated with her – if he didn't pay so much attention to her moods and movements, if he hadn't been keeping careful mental track of their progress, if he hadn't been second-guessing every little happiness she seemed to offer him for over a year now – he wouldn't even notice the little ways she'd been changing around him. The new way she regarded him out of the corner of her eye. The deepening ease with which she accepted him as a part of her daily life, and herself a part of his. The way she took all his out-of-character moments comfortably in stride.

Except that he couldn't really call it "out-of-character" anymore. "Tsuruga Ren" was himself reverting to the status of character. He had worked very hard for years, and finally, by the time he met Mogami Kyoko, "Tsuruga Ren" was the very clothing of his thoughts. Hizuri Kuon was sealed harmlessly away. Any of the things that might release Kuon, well, those were things that Tsuruga Ren didn't dabble in. Like love, for instance, or angry roles. Ever since Katsuki, though, the seal had been eroding, and now he couldn't even be sure what name to call himself.

(And why did he take that job, anyway? Why did he insist on it, pursue it even against the president's strong counsel? Because he wanted a barometer, a slide rule, wanted to see where he stood relative to his father. He wanted to go back home. And maybe he would not have thought of it then, had she not reappeared out of nowhere (out of a haze of rage and humiliation and misplaced memories) to remind him that he had a past not in the least connected to his present.)

He had decided, after many, many nights of both sober and inebriated deliberation, that he was whoever he was when she was with him, and that whatever she called him was his name. It was sappy, but it was the best solution he could come up with. And he loved her; he probably would have felt that way even without his ten ton baggage. He was a man with a violent temper that boiled under his skin and occasionally steamed out from his seams harshly, like a kettle, but who was also capable watching the mistress of his heart prance around his apartment in his old sweatshirts (because that was what she did when it was cold and she'd not brought her own sweater and he refused to turn the heat on because he could not see any reason why he she be forced to strip down to his undershirt in his own apartment in the middle of winter, thank-you-very-much) without so much as ogling her, because it might make her uncomfortable. He was most certainly not "Tsuruga Ren," but he could not remember Hizuri Kuon being this way either. He was himself, and as long as she didn't run away from him, he was willing (willed himself) to be satisfied.

And watching her now, he truly felt something akin to satisfaction. She was almost 18, almost finished with her high school graduation requirements – he didn't even want to know where she'd found time to do that, between all her filming – and if someone had asked him what their relationship was, he'd have been honestly incapable of labeling it. (This was improvement, he had to remind himself. In earlier days (viz, one year prior), he could have stated with cold verity that she was a respected kouhai, because that's all she'd let herself be.) But now she was too close to be just his kouhai, his coworker, or even his friend. He began to feel, selfish as it was, that it was safe to love her. Even if she wasn't ready to return his love, or even accept it, she _did_ accept and return his caring. As long as he could keep a lid on what he showed her, it was alright to feel. Forgivable. Maybe by the time she was ready to be his, he'd be worthy of her. It was alright.

As long as he never told her.

He did tell her though, and in later years – later hours, even – he would feel slightly ridiculous about it. He'd been listening to her talk, mesmerized by her movements, deliberately reminding himself to keep a leash on himself (_Eyes, __heel.__ Hands, __heel.__ IMAGINATION, __HEEL._), but at some point he simply forget that he wasn't allowed to say it.

She was reenacting an exchange between herself and the girl playing her younger sister, a difficult little diva of a tween who'd been in the business just a few months longer than Kyoko, and who evidently felt that their relative positions as lead and supporting cast were completely inappropriate. She'd been making trouble all over the set as her own completely ineffectual means of revolt. Kyoko was explaining her thoughts –

"I knew she didn't really want to sabotage the drama. She's not a bad person, and she loves to act. She definitely wanted the drama to turn out well, and she's always professional when she's acting. She was just being a spoiled brat because she didn't like _me,_so I thought if I could just teach her a lesson, you know, like a big sister instead of a senpai, then she would stop being so difficult and we could all get along – "

When he laughed softly and Kyoko paused her narrative.

"What?" she asked.

He shook his head and smiled. "Nothing. This is just why I love you."

She froze, looking as shocked and afraid as she did in his nightmares. He was surprised to find that the shock hurt his heart much more than the fear did.

"Did you honestly not know?" he asked quietly. "Honestly?"

Enormous tears collected in her eyes and suddenly she was wailing.

Kuon felt his heart fracture into a billion pieces. _You__ selfish __bastard. __This __is __what __she __thinks __of __your __love_. He sat up straighter on the couch, held a hand out, held back, desperate to comfort her, terrified that he could only make it worse.

"Kyo- Mogami-san, please don't cry. Please."

She took a deep breath and howled, "What am I gonna do when you get sick of me?"

_What?_

She continued to speak through her tears. "Even if you think you love me right now you'll just get sick of me someday because I'm the most boring woman in the world and then what will do?"

He blinked. "Wh-what-? Kyoko-chan you are the least boring woman I have ever met in my life, what do you mean – "

"You only think that because I'm an actress!"

He blinked again. He was fairly certain she was making no sense.

"You only think I'm interesting because you don't know I'm in love with you but now that you've said it I have to say it too and now that I've said I can't take it back and even though I swore I'd never do it again I could do it all over again if it was for you I could give up everything or do anything you wanted but then I'd become a boring woman and you'd get sick of me and hate me just like Shotaro and my mother and everybody else and then I wouldn't know what to do anymore senpai you jerk why did you have to say anything~!" And she was back to wailing wordlessly again.

Kuon made a deliberate decision to process precisely one part of that outburst. He decided to process only the part where she said "I'm in love with you," and, so doing, he closed the distance between them, took her face between his hands, leaned down and kissed her, softly, gently, on her mouth and cheeks and forehead, over and over, until finally her tears sniffled to an end and she buried her face in his chest, bunching her hands into his shirt. He pressed her to him, laughing from a place so deep in his heart he thought he may never feel heartache again.

"Kyoko-chan, you have no idea how much I love you. We haven't been together even half an hour. Please don't make me break up with you already."

Kyoko leaned back in his arms, peered up at him with a question on her face.

He brought his fingers to her chin, traced the delicate line of her jaw with his thumb. "Please?" he asked. "Be mine?"

She blushed profusely, which he took to mean yes, and leaned in to kiss her again.

The next day they informed, and swore to secrecy, precisely three people. Yashiro, Kuon explained, had to be told immediately or he would have a meltdown when he finally found out; Moko-san, Kyoko explained, had to be told immediately or she might never speak to Kyoko again when she finally found out; the President, they both agreed, had to be told immediately or he would make an absolutely mortifyingly enormous deal out of it when he finally found out. And they also agreed that they wanted to keep it from the public as long as possible.

Kuon had called the President that very night, requesting a morning meeting with the prescribed guest list, and the nervous couple clasped hands after their announcement, waiting for the inevitably exaggerated reactions of their friends.

Yashiro, whose eyes had begun sparkling as soon as he saw Ren and Kyoko walk in at the same time, crooned like a schoolboy, jumped up from the overstuffed couch and began pumping his fist in the air, screaming largely incoherent words of triumph. Kyoko, blushing profusely, looked at Ren, hoping for some explanation as to why Yashiro-san would be so excited about this. Ren ignored her pointed look and instead planted his face in his hand.

Kanae sighed, rolled her eyes, and said "_Finally_. Honestly, I was almost ready to tell him for you, I was getting so sick of you going on and on about how wonderful he was." Kyoko's blush grew brighter and Ren glowed a little bit from behind his hand, which he promptly removed so as to take in her reaction. Even her hand in his was growing warm. "And _you_," she skewered Ren with a glare so intense it could have been used in laparoscopic surgery. He turned to face her with just the slightest of jumps. In the background, Yashiro paused his ridiculous victory dance in order to listen. "If you _ever_ hurt so much as a _single__ of __her __feelings_, I will punish you with the most physical pain I can inflict without earning legal repercussions. And Tsuruga," she paused, presumably to feed extra energy into her glare, which Ren was beginning to think might actually be capable of burning a hole in his skull, "I have a photographic memory and a very capable imagination."

"Moko-san, that's not – " Kyoko started, but Ren's hand squeezing hers stalled her.

"I'm going to have to ask for a little more generosity from you, Kotonami-san. I adore Kyoko-chan, but I'm not a very good man. I'm afraid I can't promise to never hurt her feelings." (Here eyebrows shot up all around the room: the two men out of respect – it was a brave and honest man, and a man very much in love, who would admit that he would probably hurt his woman at some point; Kanae in threat – _What__ do __you __mean __you __can__'__t __promise __not __to __hurt __her?__ Should__ I __kill __you __now __and __get __it __over __with?_; and Kyoko in embarrassment – _A-a-a-adore?_) "However Kotonami-san, if Kyoko-chan ever makes you think that I deserve it, please feel free to exact whatever punishment you deem necessary."

Kanae smirked; Kyoko paled. Yashiro looked approving. The President spoke up.

"Although, Kotonami-kun, I will have to insist that you check with me first before taking any actions. Ren is an important investment for LME; I can't have him injured in any way. However I do understand your attachment to Mogami-kun and I agree that she needs someone to act as her family, so as long as you make sure to consult with me first I'm sure we can come up with an appropriate punishment for Ren, should the need ever arise."

Kanae nodded; Ren paled. Kyoko and Yashiro looked shocked.

Three days later, there was held a _very_ quiet ceremony to celebrate Kyoko's graduation from LoveMe. In addition to the President (and Sebastian), only Kanae, Chiori and Maria were present. Kanae continued to behave in a supportive, if characteristically caustic, fashion, making the President think that perhaps she was ready to graduate as well. Chiori went through a rapid-fire change of emotions which started with shock and passed through jealousy, disbelief, rage, and resentment before ending with congratulations and excitement. (The President was pleased with this too.) Maria teared up and tore into the bathroom, whither Kyoko followed her and whence they both reemerged, with swollen eyes and smiles, fifteen minutes later.

But nobody else knew. Not even their costars. Not even when they worked together. It wasn't that they avoided each other (that was something neither could bear). They simply learned to speak in code. Kyoko could tell when he meant exactly what he said, and when he meant exactly the opposite. He could read paragraphs of ripe meaning in a single innocuous sentence.

She'd spent her first night with him a little more than half a year after they'd started dating – at her request, to his shock, and he'd almost turned her down because she'd seemed so frightened, but her determination and his libido won out after an impressive fifteen minutes of debate; at the very least he'd made sure she enjoyed herself – and then she just sort of never stopped. They'd been together over a year when she'd made a formal request to move in with him. He'd laughed, carried her into the bedroom, and made love to her on the sheets she'd picked out, purchased, and spread on his bed at some point when he wasn't even paying attention.

She got her own manager and chauffeur, and both of them put up gentle(wo)manly personas so impenetrable that even the gossip rags couldn't find anything interesting to say about them. Up and coming actress Kyoko-chan was focusing on her career right now; perennial heart-throb Tsuruga Ren was _still_ not going to play around with other women while he was waiting for the love of his life to show up, no matter how much they wanted him to. And if the two appeared together at awards ceremonies and official gatherings with suspicious regularity, well, that was just because they kept getting cast in the same dramas.

Months slipped by. They developed a system for the chores. Kyoko taught him to clean the bathroom. Ren taught her things that she would never, ever, _ever_ tell anyone else about _ever_, for fear the heat of the ensuing blush would burn her entirely away. They argued and fought, forgave and made up. The months slipped into years, and they were happy.

* * *

**A/N: **Well, there you go. I'll be honest: I fell out of love with this story. I wanted to get it done, but I wasn't committed to it anymore. So it languished for months and months and months before I could push through my writer's block to finish it. I sincerely hope it lives up to your expectations, oh kind reader. If there's anything you feel is particularly disappointing, please feel free to leave me a review. The final chapter will be up shortly.


	11. The Beginning

_Final chapter! It's been quite a trip, thank you for coming with me all the way to the end.  
_

* * *

**The Beginning  
**

Ren was ready. It had been nearly a decade since he left home. There'd already been two anniversaries with Kyoko (none involving a ring, but he was getting to that, at her pace). And now his father was back in Japan, sitting in the president's waiting room, just an elevator ride away, just a hallway away, just a door knock and butler away, just around this corner –

" – but it really is an honor for Otou-san to seek me out like this. Shouldn't it be the child's duty to go looking for her parents?"

_Why is Kyoko - ?_

His father laughed (and it was the same laugh that had resounded throughout his childhood, the great barrel-drum sound that accompanied all of his best memories). "Of course not! Obviously it's the father's job to come looking for his son! I wouldn't be an idiotic doting parent if I didn't."

There was a pause, and Ren was sure that Kyoko was blushing. _Of __course __she __wouldn__'__t __know__ about __that, __the __kind __of __love__ that __drives __a __parent __to __find __their __baby __at __any __cost.__ She __wouldn__'__t __have __any __experience __with __that_.

"Mother's looking forward to meeting you, too. You'll have to come home for a visit soon."

Ren's head snapped up.

"M-m-m- _mother_?"

"Otherwise known as my lovely wife! The ineffable Juliella."

"B-b-b-but – "

"She's jealous that I've got myself a second son that she wasn't involved in making. You'd better hurry to her side and reassure her like a good child. Emails and phone calls aren't cutting it anymore, it seems."

_She speaks with Mom too… how did I not know that she speaks with Mom too?_

"I would… I would be honored to meet Okaa-san…" Kyoko's voice had dropped to something barely above a whisper and Ren was thinking now might be a good time to walk into the conversation.

But his father suddenly changed topics. "But other than that, I want to hear about how you've been doing! And I don't want a professional status report. I'm capable of keeping up with all of your appearances on my own. I want to know all the juicy details."

Kyoko stuttered incoherently.

"For instance, I hear you've been secretly dating Tsuruga Ren for two years now, you sneaky girl."

"You saw the press conference?"

"Obviously! Didn't I just say I keep up with all your appearances? Humph. Some son I have, doesn't even listen to her father when he's speaking…"

"We… didn't keep it a secret for any big reason. At first we were a little worried about each other's careers, but really we just liked the privacy. It was Takarada-kaichou who convinced us to go public, since I turned 20 a few months ago. He said at this point it might cause a scandal if we got found out by accident, like that the media might think we were hiding something big, so we might as well come out with it ourselves. Since I'm not a minor anymore."

Ren knew that tone of voice – it was a character voice, one she used when she was tremendously embarrassed but didn't want anyone to know, typically during interviews and the like. It was one of her Rising Starlet Kyouko voices. It was as endearing as it was deceitful, and he was proud that she never used it on him.

"I see, I see… well, when you come home for a visit, you can bring him along."

Ren tensed. _What__ is __he__ –_

"Oh no! I couldn't possibly do that! He has to go home first himself! I can't be the one to bring him to you! Definitely!"

And every cell in Ren's body stood stock still.

There was a silence that could have lasted milliseconds or lightyears.

It was Hizuri Kuu who broke it. "And do you think he'll be doing that anytime soon, Kyoko-chan?"

"I… oh no, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to… that's a secret I'm not supposed to know, I can't… I'm so, so sorry – "

"Kyoko-chan. Boss says you know my son better than anyone these days. Do you think he will come home soon?"

"I don't – "

Ren had no idea what he did, but it must have made noise. His father was suddenly standing next to him, looking worried and protective.

And there was Kyoko, tiny and fragile. _How__ is __it __possible __that __she __is __so __small?_ Her hands clutched up at her chest in precisely the shape they would hold if they were wrapped round a dagger, and he watched tears form in her eyes as if it weren't _his_heart that had just been stabbed through, but her own.

Had he not been an actor, he might have raged at her. Had he had no temper, he might have cried.

He deliberately blanked his face, pasted a winning smile upon it, and addressed himself to his father.

"I'm sorry. It seems I've interrupted your discussion. Please accept my apologies." He bowed, and when his voice circled back to his own eardrums it sounded cold. _Better, __act __better__…_

"Kuon – "

"If you'll excuse me, I have work to get to. I was going to speak with the president, but it's nothing urgent."

"Senpai – !"

He walked straight back towards the door, past it, down the hallway, towards the elevator. He could hear feet behind him. But – _Don__'__t __turn__ around. __Don__'__t __turn __around.__ Don__'__t __turn__ around__ – _if he saw her, it would be over. He'd either scream or sob. And Tsuruga Ren did not do such things.

Her voice called to him – _Senpai! __Senpai, __please!_ – but he blocked it out. He couldn't see her, couldn't hear her, couldn't think of her and all the things she meant to him – _Don__'__t__ scream,__ don__'__t__ cry,__ don__'__t__ turn __around._

The elevator doors clicked shut behind him, he punched a button, began to regulate his breathing.

He did not know how much she knew, or how she knew it, for how long she'd known, who told her, or why she had never spoken of it to him. And he was utterly terrified to find out.

He did not see her for two days.

He had gone to work after that, and Yashiro had noticed the change in his demeanor. It would have been impossible not to. Suddenly the past four years were gone and he was the façade of a man he'd been at twenty. But Yashiro said little about it. He looked surprised at first, worried, and then hurt, and then later just sad.

Ren wondered what the President could have told him, but_…__it__ doesn__'__t __matter_.

After work he'd gone to a hotel. Going home to their apartment was impossible. He could not see her. He ordered a bottle of Scotch, drank half of it, and went to sleep.

The second day passed the same way the first had. Ren was not entirely sure that it wasn't just the same day happening all over again. He woke up (alone), brushed his teeth (with a white toobrush, not his blue one, definitely not the pink one, that one was Kyo-), washed his face (the towel he dried himself with was overstarched and stiff). His manager showed up (with a change of clothes), they talked briefly (about his schedule and nothing else). They descended to the lobby (red and gold, instead of sleek and glass-doored), got his car (from valet), drove to the first set. Ren ate no breakfast, no lunch, no dinner. It was the same, exactly the same as every other day of his life.

The inside of his chest was perfectly hollow.

At two o'clock in the morning he was alone again, in the hotel room, with the bottle of Scotch in his hand, sitting in a well-padded chair that he had turned to face the window. Back to the door.

He would ask later, and she would explain that Yashiro had told her where he was, and Moko-san had convinced her to go, and she had been desperate and had cried to the receptionist and that was why he had given her a key, but at the time he did not know how it was that Mogami Kyoko was suddenly present in his hotel room. Arms wrapped round him from behind. Face pressed to his neck. Sobbing.

"I'm sorry," she said, over and over again, in a small and piteous voice. It was another voice he knew well. He had heard it often at the beginning of their relationship, when she was constantly expecting him to spurn her, because she was never, ever good enough. Before he had convinced her – _Kyoko, __I __love __you.__ You __are __always __good __enough.__ You__ are__ always __more __than __I__ deserve. __(So __don__'__t __speak __to __me__ the __way__ you __spoke __to __your __mother, __because __I __will __never __treat __you __that __way.)_

He did not want to know the answers to his questions. He was afraid. But he could not stomach the sound of her crying. _Anything_ was better than sitting and letting her cry. So he asked.

"Why? Why didn't you ever tell me?"

"I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you – "

"Who told you? How did you know?"

"It was an accident. I found out. I found something and… I figured it out. Nobody told me. Nobody else knows. I'm so sorry."

"Do you hate me?"

"I love you. I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry. I love you. Please forgive me, I didn't –"

He turned in his seat, wrapped an arm about her shoulders and guided her around the overstuffed chair, pulled her over the arm until she was on his lap, straddling him, kissing his face and crying into his hair.

" – please, I love you, and I'm so sorry – "

"Kyoko-chan."

" – I didn't think it would – I didn't mean – I'm sorry – I – "

"Kyoko-chan."

"Please forgive me, I promise I never meant to hurt you, please don't hate me, I only – I love you – "

He caught her face and kissed it. "Kyoko-chan."

She settled onto his lap, brought her hands up to his chest, but kept her head down. "I thought… I thought that if you didn't want me to know, then you had to have a reason. I didn't care. As long as you want to be with me I can be happy with anything, so I didn't – " she paused and glanced up at him, nervous. He got angry with her when she talked like that. "I – I thought that way for a while, but… it doesn't matter what your name is or who your parents are. I know you, and I love you."

Kuon stared at her. She touched his cheek and he was suddenly aware of how cold he was; the warmth of her fingers burned into his skin.

"I'm sorry for getting your name wrong when we were kids," she said.

He smiled, and she blushed (two years and she had still not stopped blushing for him; it made him think maybe there really was a god, and maybe that god didn't hate him). He pulled her hand to his mouth and kissed her palm.

"Do you know why?"

She cocked her head quizzically, as if she weren't sure what he meant, but all she said was, "No."

"I was as lost as a teenager could be. I felt like I was dying in my father's shadow, like I was being strangled by the person I loved best. And there was a local gang I'd run into sometimes. They hated me because I was Japanese, and I hated them because they hated me. Everything kept building up until I was completely full of ugly, painful feelings with no way to get them out. I had a – I had a friend, my only true friend then, who told me I should fight for the things I cared about instead of just letting everything go. It was good advice, but I didn't take it well. I – " here he took a deep breath, forced himself to hold her eyes. "I started fighting for everything. I started to enjoy it. I liked hurting people. And before I knew it I had become a person I couldn't bear to look at."

She started to protest, but he placed a soft hand over her mouth. "If I met a man today that reminded me of myself from back then, I would not let him within 50 kilometers of you."

She looked unconvinced for a moment, then kissed his hand and said nothing. He wouldn't let himself smile, because he was telling her horrible things and he had no right to smile but… _Oh,__ I __love __this __girl_.

He took another deep breath, kissed her quickly to get his courage. "Then that friend of mine, that one true friend, died because of something I did." Her eyes went wide. "I started a fight, took it too far, and Rick took the fall. For – for years, I felt like I had killed him." Tears collected in her eyes and she shook her head vehemently. "I didn't kill him," Kuon continued. "I didn't kill him. It took me years to believe it, but it's true. But it's also true that he died because of me." She was crying now, silently, and it was breaking his heart. "If I hadn't relied on him so much, if I hadn't been such a mess, if I hadn't been a useless teenager, if I hadn't ever been born – "

"No!" she cried, and her voice sounded like water bursting through a dam. "Don't say that, don't you even dare say that, not even one word of it!"

He was silent for a moment, but then said quietly. "If it hadn't been for me, Rick would not have died."

Her face broke and she buried herself in his chest. "Don't say those things," she said, between tears. "Don't even think them."

He wrapped his arms around her and said nothing for a long time. When he spoke, it was barely more than a whisper, and he felt that perhaps if he spoke so quietly the words wouldn't count. Maybe she wouldn't hear. Maybe she wouldn't confirm it, that greatest, most horrible fear of his. "I have always felt that I have no right to love you."

She leaned back in his arms and stared at him with those clear, gold eyes that he had come treat as something like a moral compass. If they looked frightened, or sad, or angry, then he had done something wrong. If they looked happy, then he had done something right.

She placed both of her hands on the side of his face, traced his cheekbones with her thumbs, his jaw with her pinkies. She slid her hands down to his neck, wrapped them, laced her fingers at his nape.

And she kissed him.

He carried her to the bed and they made love there, on the stiff-starched sheets, among the foreign pillows, under the sharp lights of Tokyo, busy even at that hour outside the window and hundreds of feet below.

They made love, and it was the most honest thing he had ever done. They made love, and her bones creaked his name.

* * *

**A/N: **Aaaaaand we're done! Comments? Criticisms? Complaints? Cat-calls? Leave 'em in the reviews!


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